Edward Young Quotes
1683–1765 England
Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – April 5, 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.
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Also known as: Young, Edward
Random Edward Young quote
252 quotes
How is night's sable mantle labor'd o'er,
How richly wrought with attributes divine!
What wisdom shines! what love! this midnight pomp,
This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds inlaid
Built with divine ambition!
Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
Each man makes his own stature, builds himself.
Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids;
Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
Night-Thoughts (1742)
The Last Day, book i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume;
The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves.
Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound;
When cut by wit, it casts a brighter beam;
Yet, wit apart, it is a diamond still.
Lorenzo! hast thou ever weigh'd a sigh?
Or studied the philosophy of tears?—
* * * * *
Hast thou descended deep into the breast,
And seen their source? If not, descend with me,
And trace these briny riv'lets to their springs.
Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.
Busiris (1719)
[The] public path of life
Is dirty.
He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
And says he called another; that arrives,
Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;
Till one calls him, who varies not his call,
But holds him fast, in chains of darkness bound,
Till Nature dies, and judgment sets him free;
A freedom far less welcome than this chain.
They only babble who practise not reflection.
Misattributed
By all means use some time to be alone.
Misattributed
Tomorrow is a satire on today,
And shows its weakness.
Misattributed
The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
Misattributed