Abraham Cowley Quotes

Thus would I double my life's fading space;For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.

Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once past by, is bald behind.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

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

The world's a scene of changes, and to be constant, in nature were inconstancy.

Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.

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

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

Life is an incurable disease.

Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, thy no less silent lover?

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

A mighty pain to love it is,
And 't is a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.

Banish business, banish sorrow. To the gods belongs tomorrow.

Fill the bowl with rosy wine, around our temples roses twine, And let us cheerfully awhile, like wine and roses, smile.

Life for delays and doubts no time does give,
None ever yet made haste enough to live.

There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.

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

For the whole world, without a native home, Is nothing but a prison of larger room.

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

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?

Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise As praises from the men, whom all men praise.

Gold begets in brethren hate; Gold in families debate; Gold does friendship separate; Gold does civil wars create.

I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night, to-morrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today.

Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.

The world's a scene of changes.

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

Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.

May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends,
And many books, both true.

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

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.

Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.

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

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

All the world's bravery that delights our eyes is but thy several liveries.

Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.

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

Thus each extreme to equal danger tends, Plenty, as well as Want, can sep'rate friends.

When Israel was from bondage led,Led by the Almighty's handFrom out of foreign land,The great sea beheld and fled.

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.

The present is all the ready money Fate can give.

Hope! of all ills that men endure, the only cheap and universal cure.

Much will always wanting be
To him who much desires.

But what is woman? Only one of nature's agreeable blunders.

Come, my best friends, my best books, and lead me on.

What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?

Enjoy the present hour, Be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish Th' approaches of the last.

The monster London laugh at me.

Stones of small worth may lie unseen by day, But night itself does the rich gem betray.

Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.

The present is an eternal now.

The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.

Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie and teach that truth is truest poesy.

Ere I descend to th' grave,
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books.

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!

His time's forever, everywhere his place.

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!

Nothing is to come, and nothing past: But an eternal now, does always last.