Top 200 William Cowper Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “They best can judge a poet’s worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.”

— William Cowper

52. “Some write a narrative of wars and feats, Of heroes little known, and call the rant A history.”

— William Cowper

53. “Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, We love the play-place of our early days; The scene is touching, and the heart is stone, That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.”

— William Cowper

54. “If hindrances obstruct the way, Thy magnanimity display. And let thy strength be seen: But O, if Fortune fill thy sail With more than a propitious gale, Take half thy canvas in.”

— William Cowper

55. “Elegant as simplicity, and warm As ecstasy.”

— William Cowper

56. “How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compared with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light.”

— William Cowper

57. “Where men of judgment creep and feel their way, The positive pronounce without dismay.”

— William Cowper

58. “They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.”

— William Cowper

59. “Habits are soon assumed; but when we strive to strip them off, ’tis being flayed alive.”

— William Cowper

60. “A moral, sensible, and well-bred manWill not affront me, and no other can.”

— William Cowper

61. “As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin’s rotten trunk, concealing its defects.”

— William Cowper

62. “A noisy man is always in the right.”

— William Cowper

63. “Admirals extolled for standing still, or doing nothing with a deal of skill.”

— William Cowper

64. “A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.”

— William Cowper

65. “What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.”

— William Cowper

66. “Philologists, who chase A painting syllable through time and space Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah’s Ark.”

— William Cowper

67. “Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.”

— William Cowper

68. “Misses! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry – Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.”

— William Cowper

69. “O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.”

— William Cowper

70. “Words learn’d by rote a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse, Not more distinct from harmony divine The constant creaking of a country sign.”

— William Cowper

71. “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!”

— William Cowper

72. “Blest be the art that can immortalize, – the art that baffles time’s tyrannic claim to quench it.”

— William Cowper

73. “But war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings should not play at. Nations would do well To extort their truncheons from the puny hands Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil, Because men suffer it, their toy the world.”

— William Cowper

74. “Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.”

— William Cowper

75. “Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.”

— William Cowper

76. “Still ending, and beginning still.”

— William Cowper

77. “England, with all thy faults I love thee still, My country!”

— William Cowper

78. “Not to understand a treasure’s worth till time has stole away the slighted good, is cause of half the poverty we feel, and makes the world the wilderness it is.”

— William Cowper

79. “Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.”

— William Cowper

80. “Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word!”

— William Cowper

81. “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.”

— William Cowper

82. “An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.”

— William Cowper

83. “Give what thou canst, without Thee we are poor; And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”

— William Cowper

84. “Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oftenest in what least we dread; Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow.”

— William Cowper

85. “A self-made man? Yes, and one who worships his creator.”

— William Cowper

86. “I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?”

— William Cowper

87. “Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa around, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.”

— William Cowper

88. “The solemn fop; significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.”

— William Cowper

89. “When I thinkof my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there; But alas! recollection at hand Soon hurries me back to despair.”

— William Cowper

90. “The man that hails you Tom or Jack, and proves by thumps upon your back how he esteems your merit, is such a friend, that one had need be very much his friend indeed to pardon or to bear it.”

— William Cowper

91. “There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart; he does not feel for man.”

— William Cowper

92. “The cares of today are seldom those of tomorrow.”

— William Cowper

93. “How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval upon the ear In cadence sweet; now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where Memory slept.”

— William Cowper

94. “Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another’s pain.”

— William Cowper

95. “The cares of today are seldom those of tomorrow, and when we lie down at night we may safely say to most of our troubles, “Ye have done your worst, and we shall see you no more.””

— William Cowper

96. “Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.”

— William Cowper

97. “I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.”

— William Cowper

98. “Remorse begets reform.”

— William Cowper

99. “The bird that flutters least is longest on the wing.”

— William Cowper

100. “Laugh at all you trembled at before.”

— William Cowper