Abraham Cowley Quotes

As for being much known by sight, and pointed out, I cannot comprehend the honor that lies withal; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor.

The present is all the ready money Fate can give.

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

Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.

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

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ear to hear anything of praise from him.

There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.

Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

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.

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

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

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

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

Life is an incurable disease.

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

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

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.

There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.

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?

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that ... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature.

The world's a scene of changes.

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

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

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

"We may talk what we please," he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, "of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles, in fields d'or or d'argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms."

Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.

Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.

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

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

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

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

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

s a scene of changes, and to be constant in Nature were inconstancy.

The present is an eternal now.

The monster London laugh at me.

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

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.

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

Man is too near all kinds of beasts,--a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

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

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

All this world's noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

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