Abraham Cowley Quotes - Page 2

Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!

I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.

Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.

His time's forever, everywhere his place.

Nay, in death's hand, the grape-stone proves As strong as thunder is in Jove's.

Hope! fortune's cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!

Poets by Death are conquer'd but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.

All this world's noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

And I myself a Catholic will be, So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee. Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow On us, the Poets militant below.

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?

Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrow draw out all our store, Till the exhausted well can yield no more.

Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me.

Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?

Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.

The world's a scene of changes.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.

Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.

Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose, To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave, To Saturn's string a touch more sore and grave. The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow, And short and long, were mixt and woven so, Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall, As made this decent measur'd dance of all. And this is Musick.

Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.

The Sunflow'r, thinking 'twas for him foul shame To nap by daylight, strove t' excuse the blame; It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, But too great weight and largeness of his head.

Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape Who dost in every country change thy shape!

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.

What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!