Top 200 William Cowper Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “An epigram is but a feeble thing – With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.”

— William Cowper

152. “There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.”

— William Cowper

153. “Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood.”

— William Cowper

154. “Lights of the world, and stars of human race.”

— William Cowper

155. “Then liberty, like day, Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.”

— William Cowper

156. “Great offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.”

— William Cowper

157. “It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.”

— William Cowper

158. “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.”

— William Cowper

159. “Though peace be made, yet it’s interest that keep peace.”

— William Cowper

160. “But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the good they seek.”

— William Cowper

161. “Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.”

— William Cowper

162. “How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!”

— William Cowper

163. “How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once – through inexperience, as we now perceive – we missed that happiness we might have found!”

— William Cowper

164. “The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!”

— William Cowper

165. “Some to the fascination of a name, Surrender judgment hoodwinked.”

— William Cowper

166. “The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.”

— William Cowper

167. “Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.”

— William Cowper

168. “Spare feast! a radish and an egg.”

— William Cowper

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

— William Cowper

170. “Man on the dubious waves of error toss’d.”

— William Cowper

171. “Those flimsy webs that break as soon as wrought, attain not to the dignity of thought.”

— William Cowper

172. “An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path. But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will turn aside and let the reptile live.”

— William Cowper

173. “The only amarantine flower on earth Is virtue.”

— William Cowper

174. “The man to solitude accustom’d long, Perceives in everything that lives a tongue; Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees Have speech for him, and understood with ease, After long drought when rains abundant fall, He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.”

— William Cowper

175. “Thieves at home must hang; but he that puts Into his overgorged and bloated purse The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.”

— William Cowper

176. “Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home; But elegance, chief grace the garden shows, And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind.”

— William Cowper

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

— William Cowper

178. “It is a general rule of Judgment, that a mischief should rather be admitted than an inconvenience.”

— William Cowper

179. “Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much.”

— William Cowper

180. “When from soft love proceeds the deep distress, ah! why forbid the willing tears to flow?”

— William Cowper

181. “Greece, sound, thy Homer’s, Rome thy Virgil’s name, But England’s Milton equals both in fame.”

— William Cowper

182. “Could he with reason murmur at his case, Himself sole author of his own disgrace?”

— William Cowper

183. “Perhaps thou gav’st me, though unseen, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss.”

— William Cowper

184. “All truth is precious, if not all divine; and what dilates the powers must needs refine.”

— William Cowper

185. “The few that pray at all pray oft amiss.”

— William Cowper

186. “Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame, – all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love.”

— William Cowper

187. “He that runs may read.”

— William Cowper

188. “His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home.”

— William Cowper

189. “A story, in which native humour reigns, Is often useful, always entertains; A graver fact, enlisted on your side, May furnish illustration, well applied; But sedentary weavers of long tales Give me the fidgets, and my patience fails.”

— William Cowper

190. “The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.”

— William Cowper

191. “Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand.”

— William Cowper

192. “O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!”

— William Cowper

193. “If a great man struggling with misfortunes is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one.”

— William Cowper

194. “No traveler e’er reached that blest abode who found not thorns and briers in his road.”

— William Cowper

195. “But truths on which depends our main concern, That ’tis our shame and misery not to learn, Shine by the side of every path we tread With such a lustre he that runs may read.”

— William Cowper

196. “Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.”

— William Cowper

197. “But animated nature sweeter still, to soothe and satisfy the human ear.”

— William Cowper

198. “Stamps God’s own name upon a lie just made, To turn a penny in the way of trade.”

— William Cowper

199. “Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time.”

— William Cowper

200. “Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose.”

— William Cowper