Abraham Cowley Quotes

• Fond archer, Hope! who tak'st thy aim so far, That still or short, or wide thine arrows are!
• Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discover And not to me, they no less silent lover?
• To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world
• What shall I do to be forever known, And make the age to come my own?
• His time is forever, everywhere his place.
• We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine, But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry; Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.
• His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I 'm sure, was in the right.
• The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair.
• Fill all the glasses there, for why Should every creature drink but I? Why, man of morals, tell me why?
• 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.
• Hope, of all ills that men endure, The only cheap and universal cure.
• Th' adorning thee with so much art Is but a barb'rous skill; 'T is like the pois'ning of a dart, Too apt before to kill.
• Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now does always last.
• When Israel was from bondage led, Led by the Almighty's hand From out of foreign land, The great sea beheld and fled.
• An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair, And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
• The monster London laugh at me.
• Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington wilt grow, A solitude almost.
• The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books.
• God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
• Hence, ye profane! I hate ye all, Both the great vulgar and the small.
• Charm'd with the foolish whistling of a name.
• Words that weep and tears that speak.
• We griev'd, we sigh'd, we wept; we never blush'd before.
• Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.
• Awake, awake, my Lyre! And tell thy silent master's humble tale In sounds that may prevail; Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire: Though so exalted she And I so lowly be Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
• Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.
• Life is an incurable disease.
• Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape Who dost in every country change thy shape!

abraham cowley