William Cowper Quotes

Misses! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry — Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.

But Conversation, choose what theme we may, And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.

There goes the parson, O illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.

I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb, am
Buried above ground.

The beggarly last doit.

Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.

There is a bird who by his coat, And by the hoarseness of his note, Might be supposed a crow.

O Popular Applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?

She that asks Her dear five hundred friends.

It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity.

Nature, exerting an unwearied power, Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower; Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.

I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If birds confabulate or no.

The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves, by thumping on your back, His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.

I would not enter on my list of friends, (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarn'd, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

"The Castaway"

Obscurest night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roared,
When such a destined wretch as I,
washed headlong from on board.
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home forever left...