1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. William Cowper

William Cowper citations
Page 3

William Cowper , né à Berkhamsted, dans le comté anglais de Hertfordshire le 26 novembre 1731, et mort le 25 avril 1800 à East-Dereham, dans le Norfolk , est un poète britannique considéré comme le précurseur du Romantisme en poésie.

Ne commençant à publier qu'à l’âge de quarante ans, William Cowper innova en abandonnant le style néo-classique et en choisissant pour thème des scènes de la vie quotidienne des campagnes anglaises, qui firent de lui l'un des poètes les plus populaires de son temps. Particulièrement apprécié par l'écrivain anglais Jane Austen - plusieurs des héroïnes de ses romans le citent ou font allusion à ses poèmes - ce précurseur du romantisme est reconnu par ses successeurs immédiats : Wordsworth et Coleridge. La poétesse Elizabeth Barrett Browning lui a même dédié un poème : Cowper's Grave. Poète moralisant, il a aussi laissé de nombreuses hymnes d'inspiration évangélique. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. novembre 1731 – 25. avril 1800
William Cowper photo
William Cowper: 174   citations 0   J'aime

William Cowper: Citations en anglais

“O Popular Applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 481.

“There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plung'd beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

No. 79, "Praise for the Fountain Opened".
Olney Hymns (1779)

“O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 120.

“Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

"On the Loss of the Royal George", st. 1 (1791).

“Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
that once lived here”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 1-2

“I would not enter on my list of friends,
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 560.

“Which not even critics criticise.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 51.

“I praise the Frenchman [Voltaire], his remark was shrewd —
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper — solitude is sweet.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper Retirement

Source: Retirement (1782), Line 739.

“Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 96.

“Made poetry a mere mechanic art.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 654.

“With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 217.

“Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Castaway

"The Castaway" (1799).

“But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 439.

“So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 29-32

“O solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 5.

“As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 444.

“In indolent vacuity of thought.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 297.

“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)

“From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 188.

“A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 193.

“Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day
(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

"The Needless Alarm, Moral" (1794).

“All learned, and all drunk!”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 478.

“Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 28.

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.

“The son of parents pass'd into the skies.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 118.

“Those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 514.

“Now let us sing — Long live the king,
And Gilpin, long live he;
And, when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

St. 63.
The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)

“He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 733.

“Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.”

Help us translate this quote
William Cowper

Source: The Negro's Complaint (1788), Lines 1-8

Auteurs similaires

John Milton photo
John Milton 5
poète, essayiste et pamphlétaire anglais
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 8
écrivain anglais, poète, essayiste, biographe, lexicographe
William Shakespeare photo
William Shakespeare 34
dramaturge et comédien anglais
Francis Bacon photo
Francis Bacon 12
homme d’État et philosophe anglais
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort photo
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort 45
poète, journaliste et moraliste français
Novalis photo
Novalis 12
poète et romancier allemand
John Locke photo
John Locke 3
philosophe britannique
Jean de La Fontaine photo
Jean de La Fontaine 55
poète, fabuliste, conteur et auteur dramatique français
Thomas Paine photo
Thomas Paine 2
intellectuel, pamphlétaire, révolutionnaire anglais puis am…
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais photo
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais 20
écrivain, musicien, homme d'affaires et poète français