Man is too near all kinds of beasts,–a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.
ABRAHAM COWLEYBooks should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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Fill all the Glasses there; for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?
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Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.
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Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.
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The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow, And short and long, were mixt and woven so, Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall, As made this decent measur’d dance of all. And this is Musick.
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Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?
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Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.
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The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
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Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,
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:Though so exalted sheAnd I so lowly beTell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
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Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.
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To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man’s, into the world, as it is God’s.
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What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!
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The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.
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The present is an eternal now.
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Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit, Or what is worse, be left by it? Why dost thou load thyself when thou ‘rt to fly, Oh, man! ordain’d to die?
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But what is woman? Only one of nature’s agreeable blunders.
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Stones of small worth may lie unseen by day, But night itself does the rich gem betray.
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All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes is but thy several liveries.
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Thus would I double my life’s fading space;For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.
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Nothing in Nature’s sober found, But an eternal Health goes round. Fill up the Bowl then, fill it high
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This only grant me, that my means may lie, too low for envy, for contempt to high.
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Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
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There Daphne’s Lover stopped, and thought it much The very leaves of her to touch: But Harvey, our Apollo, stopp’d not so; Into the Bark and Root he after her did go!
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God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
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All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!
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Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.
ABRAHAM COWLEY