William Cowper Quotes
1731–1800 England
William Cowper (26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and hymnodist.
- England
- Hymnwriters
- Poets
- Translators
Also known as: Cowper, William
289 quotes
The son of parents pass'd into the skies.
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds.
Me therefore studious of laborious ease.
Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.
We are his,
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his slaves.
Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books.
Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless when it goes as when it stands.
And the tear that is wiped with a little address,
May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound.
Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.
Tenants of life’s middle state,
Securely placed between the small and great.
He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Cowper (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.