Top 180 Edward Young Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.”

— Edward Young

52. “Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids; Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.”

— Edward Young

53. “An undevout astronomer is mad.”

— Edward Young

54. “Fond man! the vision of a moment made! Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade!”

— Edward Young

55. “Let no man trust the first false step of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, whose steep descent in last perdition ends.”

— Edward Young

56. “Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor; Part with it as with money, sparing; pay No moment but in purchase of its worth, And what it’s worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.”

— Edward Young

57. “A man I knew who lived upon a smile, And well it fed him; he look’d plump and fair, While rankest venom foam’d through every vein.”

— Edward Young

58. “This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, The twilight of our day, the vestibule; Life’s theatre as yet is shut, and death, Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar, This gross impediment of clay remove, And make us embryos of existence free.”

— Edward Young

59. “The love of praise, howe’er conceal’d by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev’ry heart.”

— Edward Young

60. “When men of infamy to grandeur soar, They light a torch to show their shame the more.”

— Edward Young

61. “The house of laughter makes a house of woe.”

— Edward Young

62. “By night an atheist half-believes in God.”

— Edward Young

63. “A God all mercy is a God unjust.”

— Edward Young

64. “A friend is worth all hazards we can run.”

— Edward Young

65. “The chamber where the good man meets his fate Is privileg’d beyond the common walk Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.”

— Edward Young

66. “An angel’s arm can’t snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can’t confine me there.”

— Edward Young

67. “How blessings brighten as they take their flight.”

— Edward Young

68. “Each moment has its sickle, emulous Of Time’s enormous scythe, whose ample sweep Strikes empires from the root.”

— Edward Young

69. “Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.”

— Edward Young

70. “Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.”

— Edward Young

71. “The maid that loves goes out to sea upon a shattered plank, and puts her trust in miracles for safety.”

— Edward Young

72. “Fame is the shade of immortality, And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught, Contemn’d; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.”

— Edward Young

73. “The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, Whispering faint echoes of the world’s applause.”

— Edward Young

74. “Angels are men of a superior kind; Angels are men in lighter habit clad.”

— Edward Young

75. “The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.”

— Edward Young

76. “In chambers deep, Where waters sleep, What unknown treasures pave the floor.”

— Edward Young

77. “When pain can’t bless, heaven quits us in despair.”

— Edward Young

78. “What ardently we wish, we soon believe.”

— Edward Young

79. “Some go to Church, proud humbly to repent, And come back much more guilty than they went: One way they look, another way they steer, Pray to the Gods; but would have Mortals hear; And when their sins they set sincerely down, They’ll find that their Religion has been one.”

— Edward Young

80. “The soft whispers of the God in man.”

— Edward Young

81. “The man that blushes is not quite a brute.”

— Edward Young

82. “Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.”

— Edward Young

83. “Death! great proprietor of all! ’tis thine To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.”

— Edward Young

84. “Ne’er to meet, or ne’er to part, is peace.”

— Edward Young

85. “Man makes a death which Nature never made. And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.”

— Edward Young

86. “The purpose firm is equal to the deed.”

— Edward Young

87. “The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss.”

— Edward Young

88. “A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.”

— Edward Young

89. “We nothing know, but what is marvellous; Yet what is marvellous, we can’t believe.”

— Edward Young

90. “What tender force, what dignity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature; around that neck what dross are gold and pearl!”

— Edward Young

91. “Where, where for shelter shall the guilty fly, When consternation turns the good man pale?”

— Edward Young

92. “Pity swells the tide of love.”

— Edward Young

93. “Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen’d to the sun.”

— Edward Young

94. “Poor in abundance, famish’d at a feast.”

— Edward Young

95. “None think the great unhappy, but the great.”

— Edward Young

96. “Heaven wills our happiness, allows our doom.”

— Edward Young

97. “He sins against this life, who slights the next.”

— Edward Young

98. “Man wants but little, nor that little long; How soon must he resign his very dust, Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!”

— Edward Young

99. “A prince indebted is a fortune made.”

— Edward Young

100. “And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?”

— Edward Young