William Cowper Quotes

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word!

Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.

Absence of occupation is not rest.

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break, With blessings on your head

Lord, it is my chief complaint, That my love is weak and faint; Yet I love thee and adore, Oh for grace to love thee more!

Folly ends where genuine hope begins.

Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too.

Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.

How happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that our petitions are heard even while we are making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them.

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.

The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Made poetry a mere mechanic art.

To impute our recovery to medicine, and to carry our view no further, is to rob God of His honor, and is saying in effect that He has parted with the keys of life and death, and, by giving to a drug the power to heal us, has placed our lives out of His own reach.

Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another's pain.

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.

Lived in his saddle, loved the chase, the course, And always, ere he mounted, kiss'd his horse.