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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

And what is reason? Be she thus defined:
Reason is upright stature in the soul.

Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,
Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.

While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He, who made him such!

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes.

But wisdom, awful wisdom! which inspects,
Discerns, compares, weighs, separates, infers,
Seizes the right, and holds it to the last.

Who can take
Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat.

'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply this performs.

What's female beauty, but an air divine,
Through which the mind's all-gentle graces shine!
They, like the Sun, irradiate all between;
The body charms, because the soul is seen.

There is in Poesy a decent pride,
Which well becomes her when she speaks to Prose,
Her younger sister.

Men drop so fast, ere life's mid stage we tread,
Few know so many friends alive, as dead.

For Rules, like Crutches, are a needful Aid to the Lame, tho' an impediment to the Strong.

Conjectures on Original Composition (1759)

Let not the cooings of the world allure thee:
Which of her lovers ever found her true?

To patchwork learn'd quotations are allied,
Both strive to make our poverty our pride.

Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding,
Creation's golden steps, to climb to Thee.

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.

Love of Fame (1725)

O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.

Man wants but little, nor that little long;
How soon must he resign his very dust,
Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!

Attribution

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