William Cowper: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Low ambition and the thirst of praise.”

William Cowper

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 591.

“Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 223.

God , Nature

“What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 55.

Life , Business

“Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 41.

Happiness

“Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 673.

“Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 905.

“A business with an income at its heels
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.”

William Cowper Retirement

Source: Retirement (1782), Line 615.

Business

“Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.”

William Cowper

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 357.

“There is mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace
And reconciles man to his lot.”

William Cowper

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 53.

Affliction

“Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.”

William Cowper Retirement

Source: Retirement (1782), Line 688.

God

“Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed.”

William Cowper

Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 18-23

Fate , Food

“With filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, My Father made them all!”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 745.

Smile , Confidence

“Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 88.

Wisdom , Men , Knowledge , Time

“Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.”

William Cowper

"The Doves", line 1. (1780).

Way

“Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain.”

William Cowper The Task

Of fox-hunting.
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 326

Pain , Pleasure , Sport

“The still small voice is wanted.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 685.

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

William Cowper

To an Afflicted Protestant Lady.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.”

William Cowper

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 556.

Age , Birth , Nature

“Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 235.

“Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.”

William Cowper

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 246.

Nature , Dependency , Happiness