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

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What is it but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?" by William Cowper?
William Cowper photo
William Cowper 174
(1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist 1731–1800

Related quotes

Woodrow Wilson photo

“Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Annual address, American Bar Association, Chattanooga (31 August 1910)
1910s
Context: Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.

William Cowper photo

“He sees that this great roundabout
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says—what says he?—Caw.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The Jackdaw (translation from Vincent Bourne).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Kevin Kelly photo

“Life is in the business of making its environment agreeable for life.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

“We define CSR as a firm's voluntary consideration of stakeholder concerns both within and outside its business operations.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "Corporate social responsibility in business-to-business markets", 2013, p. 54

Elizabeth Prentiss photo

“Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ;
How vast the mystery!
Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth
The unfathomed sea!”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Religious Poems‎ (1873), p. 41.

Matthew Arnold photo

“Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Source: Literature and Dogma (1873), Ch. 1

Antonin Artaud photo

“When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Preface: The Theater and Culture
The Theatre and Its Double (1938, translated 1958)

“Business-cycle theorists concerned themselves with why the economy naturally generated fluctuations in employment and output, [while the rest of the profession] continued to operate on the assumption that full employment was the natural, equilibrium position for the economy.”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

Source: Business Fluctuations (1952), p. 340; as cited in: Thomas Cate (2013), An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics, Second edition. p. 347

Peter Greenaway photo

“Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Zoom, 16 Nov 1988
Interviews

George Bernard Shaw photo

“Of Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Lilith, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: I say, let them dread, of all things, stagnation; for from the moment I, Lilith, lose hope and faith in them, they are doomed. In that hope and faith I have let them live for a moment; and in that moment I have spared them many times. But mightier creatures than they have killed hope and faith, and perished from the earth; and I may not spare them for ever. I am Lilith: I brought life into the whirlpool of force, and compelled my enemy, Matter, to obey a living soul. But in enslaving Life's enemy I made him Life's master; for that is the end of all slavery; and now I shall see the slave set free and the enemy reconciled, the whirlpool become all life and no matter. And because these infants that call themselves ancients are reaching out towards that, I will have patience with them still; though I know well that when they attain it they shall become one with me and supersede me, and Lilith will be only a legend and a lay that has lost its meaning. Of Life only is there no end; and though of its million starry mansions many are empty and many still unbuilt, and though its vast domain is as yet unbearably desert, my seed shall one day fill it and master its matter to its uttermost confines. And for what may be beyond, the eyesight of Lilith is too short. It is enough that there is a beyond.

Related topics