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Edward Young Quotes

1683–1765 England

Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – April 5, 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.

England
Critics
Philosophers
Poets
Theologians

Also known as: Young, Edward

Random Edward Young quote

252 quotes

Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid,
A soldier should be modest as a maid.

One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine;
And light us deep into the Deity;
How boundless in magnificence and might.

And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

In leaves, more durable than leaves of brass,
Writes our whole history.

Teach me my days to number, and apply
My trembling heart to wisdom.

Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.

A strange alternative * * *
Must women have a doctor or a dance?

Sure as night follows day,
Death treads in Pleasure's footsteps round the world,
When Pleasure treads the paths which Reason shuns.

Some for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread thro' realms their valour saved.

Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

Knocks at our hearts, and finds our thoughts at home.

And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

What most we wish, with ease we fancy near.

By night an atheist half believes a God.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

Religion's all. Descending from the skies
To wretched man, the goddess in her left
Holds out this world, and, in her right, the next.

Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines,
And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive,
What is she, but the means of happiness?
That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool.

Give me, indulgent gods! with mind serene,
And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene;
No splendid poverty, no smiling care,
No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there.

Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adorn'd.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Young (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.