Top 180 Edward Young Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “What mean we by genius, but the power of accomplishing great things without the means generally reputed necessary to that end?”

— Edward Young

152. “Less base the fear of death than fear of life.”

— Edward Young

153. “They most the world enjoy who least admire.”

— Edward Young

154. “Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon.”

— Edward Young

155. “Who knows if Shakespeare might not have thought less if he had read more?”

— Edward Young

156. “Procrastination is the thief of time: Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.”

— Edward Young

157. “But love, like wine, gives a tumultuous bliss, Heighten’d indeed beyond all mortal pleasures; But mingles pangs and madness in the bowl.”

— Edward Young

158. “Oh, how portentous is prosperity! How comet-like, it threatens while it shines.”

— Edward Young

159. “One eye on death, and one full fix’d on heaven.”

— Edward Young

160. “It is great and manly to disdain disguise; it shows our spirit and proves our strength.”

— Edward Young

161. “The man who builds, and wants wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away.”

— Edward Young

162. “Inhumanity is caught from man, From smiling man.”

— Edward Young

163. “Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, Was e’er created solely for itself.”

— Edward Young

164. “The person of wisdom is the person of years.”

— Edward Young

165. “Time destroyed Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.”

— Edward Young

166. “Give me, indulgent gods with mind serene, And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene, No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there.”

— Edward Young

167. “A dearth of words a woman need not fear; But ’tis a task indeed to learn to hear: In that the skill of conversation lies; That shows and makes you both polite and wise.”

— Edward Young

168. “Tis immortality, ’tis that alone, Amid life’s pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. That only, and that amply this performs.”

— Edward Young

169. “Day buries day; month, month; and year the year: Our life is but a chain of many deaths.”

— Edward Young

170. “The qualities all in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be felt in its tail.”

— Edward Young

171. “Take God from nature, nothing great is left.”

— Edward Young

172. “We are not all great because we are inspired, but we feel great because we are.”

— Edward Young

173. “Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!”

— Edward Young

174. “O let me be undone the common way, And have the common comfort to be pity’d, And not be ruin’d in the mask of bliss, And so be envy’d, and be wretched too!”

— Edward Young

175. “Time elaborately thrown away.”

— Edward Young

176. “Prayer ardent opens heaven.”

— Edward Young

177. “Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.”

— Edward Young

178. “Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.”

— Edward Young

179. “And friend received with thumps upon the back.”

— Edward Young

180. “What most we wish, with ease we fancy near.”

— Edward Young

181. “Men are but men; we did not make ourselves.”

— Edward Young

182. “Midway from Nothing to the Deity!”

— Edward Young

183. “Man wants little, nor that little long.”

— Edward Young

184. “We cry for mercy to the next amusement, The next amusement mortgages our fields.”

— Edward Young

185. “Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It, makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groan’d The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.”

— Edward Young

186. “Who combats with a brother, wounds himself.”

— Edward Young

187. “To know the world, not love her, is thy point; She gives but little, nor that little, long.”

— Edward Young

188. “Wishing of all employments is the worst.”

— Edward Young

189. “We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile – The mind turns fool, before the cheek is dry.”

— Edward Young

190. “Independence existed for individual before liberty was established for all.”

— Edward Young

191. “Who gives an empire, by the gift defeats All end of giving; and procures contempt Instead of gratitude.”

— Edward Young

192. “Joys season’d high, and tasting strong of guilt.”

— Edward Young

193. “Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, United jar, and yet are loth to part.”

— Edward Young

194. “Nature delights in progress; in advance.”

— Edward Young

195. “When men once reach their autumn, sickly joys fall off apace, as yellow leaves from trees.”

— Edward Young

196. “We see time’s furrows on another’s brow, And death intrench’d, preparing his assault; How few themselves in that just mirror see!”

— Edward Young

197. “I had looked for happiness in fast living, but it was not there. I tried to find it in money, but it was not there either.”

— Edward Young

198. “But if an Original, by being as excellent, as new, adds admiration to surprize, then we are at the writer’s mercy; on the strong wing of his imagination, we are snatched from Britain to Italy, from climate to climate, from pleasure to pleasure; we have no home, no thought, of our own; till the magician drops his pen: And then falling down into ourselves, we awake to flat realities, lamenting the change, like the beggar who dreamt himself a prince.”

— Edward Young

199. “Men before you have quit smoking – you can too!”

— Edward Young