| 204 Famous Quotes by William Cowper
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“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.”
Preaching Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 372)
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“Would I describe a preacher,
. . . .
I would express him simple, grave, sincere;
In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain,
And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste,
And natural in gesture; much impress'd
Himself, as conscious of his awful charge,
And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds
May feel it too; affectionate in look,
And tender in address, as well becomes
A messenger of grace to guilty men.”
Preaching Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 394)
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“He that negotiates between God and man,
As God's ambassador, the grand concerns
Of judgment and of mercy, should beware
Of lightness in his speech.”
Preaching Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 463)
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“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!”
Preaching Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 463)
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“A kick that scarce would move a horse,
May kill a sound divine.”
Preaching Quotes Source: Yearly Distress (st. 16)
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“The priest he merry is, and blithe
Three-quarters of a year,
But oh! it cuts him like a scythe
When tithing time draws near.”
Preaching Quotes Source: Yearly Distress (st. 2)
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“Fast-anchor'd isle.”
Islands Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, The Timepiece, l. 151)
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“. . . glory built
On selfish principles is shame and guilt.”
Glory Quotes Source: Table Talk (l. 1)
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“Hast thou not learn'd what thou art often told,
A truth still sacred, and believed of old,
That no success attends on spears and swords
Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord's?”
Success Quotes Source: Expostulation (l. 350)
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“England with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee.”
England Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 206)
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“Without one friend, above all foes,
Britannia gives the world repose.”
England Quotes Source: To Sir Joshua Reynolds
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“In indolent vacuity of thought.”
Thought Quotes Source: Task (bk. IV, The Winter Evening, l. 297)
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“A business with an income at its heels.”
Business Quotes Source: Retirement (l. 614)
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“And spare the poet for his subject's sake.”
Poets Quotes Source: Charity (last line)
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“Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared,
And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard;
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.”
Poets Quotes Source: Table Talk
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“There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.”
Poets Quotes Source: Task (bk. II, l. 285)
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“They best can judge a poet's worth,
Who oft themselves have known
The pangs of a poetic birth
By labours of their own.”
Poets Quotes Source: To Dr. Darwin (st. 2)
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“Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name,
But England's Milton equals both in fame.”
Poets Quotes Source: To John Milton
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“None but an author knows an author's cares,
Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears.”
Authorship Quotes Source: The Progress of Error (l. 518)
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“Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
Become more rare as dissipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry
Tickle and entertain us, or we die!”
Authorship Quotes Source: Retirement (l. 707)
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“So that the jest is clearly to be seen,
Not in the words--but in the gap between;
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.”
Authorship Quotes Source: Table Talk (l. 540)
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“The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler sort,
Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,
Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.”
Reading Quotes Source: Retirement (l. 715)
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“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.”
Reading Quotes Source: Tirocinium (l. 77)
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“Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.”
Flowers Quotes Source: Task (bk. VI, l. 241)
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“But many a crime deemed innocent on earth
Is registered in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.”
Crime Quotes Source: Task (bk. VI, l. 439)
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William Cowper Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings
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