Quotes
Quotes - Cowper
Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As ecstasy.
Low ambition and the thirst of praise.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
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.
Lights of the world, and stars of human race.
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home!
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,--
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
The sounding jargon of the schools.
When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings.
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me,--and no other can.
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys:
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.
I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.
The solemn fop; significant and budge;
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.
His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock, it never is at home.
Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
That good diffused may more abundant grow.
A business with an income at its heels
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.
