W Cowper Quotes & Sayings

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

They love the country, and none else, who seek
For their own sake its silence and its shade.
Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
Susceptible of pity, or a mind
Cultured and capable of sober thought. — William Cowper

The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue. — William Cowper

Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore. — William Cowper

Truth is the golden girdle of the globe. — William Cowper

Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they. — William Cowper

Man in society is like a flow'r,
Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone
His faculties expanded in full bloom
Shine out, there only reach their proper use. — William Cowper

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit. — William Cowper

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways. — John Cowper Powys

In a fleshy tomb I am buried above ground. — William Cowper

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain. — William Cowper

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

Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time. — William Cowper

To trace in Nature's most minute design The signature and stamp of power divine ... The Invisible in things scarce seen revealed, To whom an atom is an ample field. — William Cowper

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach. — William Cowper

Even in the stifling bosom of the town,
A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms
That soothes the rich possessor; much consol'd,
That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,
Or nightshade, or valerian, grace the well
He cultivates. — William Cowper

Their tameness is shocking to me. — William Cowper

There is mercy in every place. And mercy, encouraging thought gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot. — William Cowper

[My kitten] is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know you will delight in her. — William Cowper

Eternity for bubbles proves at last a senseless bargain. — William Cowper

Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials. — John Cowper Powys

Lived in his saddle, loved the chase, the course, And always, ere he mounted, kiss'd his horse. — William Cowper

God forbid that Judges upon their oath should make resolutions to enlarge jurisdiction. — William Cowper

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. — William Cowper

A noisy man is always in the right. — William Cowper

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

Back therefore we find ourselves returning. Back to the wisdom of the plough; back to the wisdom of those who follow the sea. It is all a matter of the wheel coming full-circle. For the sophisticated system of mental reactions to which we finally give our adherence is only the intellectualised reproduction of what more happily constituted natures, without knowing what they possess, possess. Thus between true philosophers and the true simple people there is a magnetic understanding; whereas, the clever ones whose bastard culture only divorces them from the wisdom of the earth remain pilloried and paralysed on the prongs of their own conceit. — John Cowper Powys

The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er
And add a smile to what was sweet before,
He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
Improve the remnant of his wasted span.
And having lived a trifler, die a man. — William Cowper

Still ending, and beginning still! — William Cowper

Pity! Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
And every muse attend her in her way. — William Cowper