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?
ABRAHAM COWLEYLife for delays and doubts no time does give, None ever yet made haste enough to live.
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!
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I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that
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I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night, to-morrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today.
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The spade, the plough-share, and the rake) Arts, in most cruel wise Man’s left to epitomize!
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There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.
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There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.
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Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.
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Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
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Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne’er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov’d and loving me.
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Life is an incurable disease.
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Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.
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Hope! fortune’s cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!
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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.
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Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise, He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river’s bank expecting stay
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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.
ABRAHAM COWLEY