Edward Young: Citations en anglais
“A God all mercy is a God unjust.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 233.
“The spirit walks of every day deceased.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 180.
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 393.
“And friend received with thumps upon the back.”
Universal Passion; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“To waft a feather or to drown a fly.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 154.
“A man of pleasure is a man of pains.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII, Line 793.
“Too low they build who build beneath the stars.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.
Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII
“Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 661.
“What ardently we wish we soon believe.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VII, Line 1311.
“They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.”
Satire I, l. 147.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
A Vindication of Providence; or, A True Estimate of Human Life (1728).
Satire VI, l. 208.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“How blessings brighten as they take their flight!”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 602.
“Accept a miracle instead of wit,—
See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.”
Lines written with the Diamond Pencil of Lord Chesterfield; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“They only babble who practise not reflection.”
From Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, Act I, sc. i.
Misattributed
“Tomorrow is a satire on today,
And shows its weakness.”
This is a quotation from "The Old Man's Relapse", a poem addressed to Edward Young, but written by Lord Melcombe.
Misattributed
“He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 24.
“The future… seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”
Widely attributed to Edward Young, but in fact written by E. B. White in Harper's Magazine (December 1940), and reprinted in his One Man's Meat (1942).
Misattributed
“The man of wisdom is the man of years.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 775.
“Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.”
Satire II, l. 83.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
“That life is long which answers life's great end.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 773.
“Virtue alone has majesty in death.”
Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 650.
