Quotes By William Cowper

O, popular applause! what heart of man is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.

Where men of judgment creep and feel their way, The positive pronounce without dismay.

A self-made man? Yes, and one who worships his creator.

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.

The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow.

No one was ever scolded out of their sins.

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.

Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

The darkest day, if you live till tomorrow, will have passed away.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.

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

Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God.

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.

No wild enthusiast could rest, till half the world like him was possessed.

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

A fool must now and then be right, by chance.

Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.