1731-1800, British Poet
A fool must now and then be right, by chance.
William Cowper – [Chance]
A fretful temper will divide the closest knot that may be tied, by ceaseless sharp corrosion; a temper passionate and fierce may suddenly your joys disperse at one immense explosion.
William Cowper – [Temper]
A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
William Cowper – [Life and Living]
A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.
William Cowper – [Wit]
A self-made man? Yes, and one who worships his creator.
William Cowper – [Pride]
Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
William Cowper – [Absence]
Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
William Cowper – [Rest]
Candid and generous and just. Boys care but little whom they trust. An error soon corrected — for who but learns in riper years. That man, when smoothest he appears, is most to be suspected?
William Cowper – [Trust]
Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.
William Cowper – [Truth]
Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
William Cowper – [Purpose]
Fanaticism soberly defined, is the false fire of an over heated mind.
William Cowper – [Fanatics and Fanaticism]
Forced from home, and all its pleasures, afric coast I left forlorn; to increase a stranger's treasures, o the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, paid my price in paltry gold; but, though theirs they have enroll'd me, minds are never to be sold.
William Cowper – [Slavery]
Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
William Cowper – [Glory]
God made the country and man made the town.
William Cowper – [Nations]
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
William Cowper – [Experts]
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?
William Cowper – [Slavery]
It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
William Cowper – [Profanity]
Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; Wisdom is humble that it knows no more.
William Cowper – [Knowledge]
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 – [Knowledge]
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: hell might afford my miseries a shelter; therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.
William Cowper – [Insanity]