Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.
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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Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,
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The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
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Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.
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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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I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.
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Hope! fortune’s cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!
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In fields d’or or d’argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.”
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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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Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.
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When Harvey’s violent passion she did see, Began to tremble and to flee; Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree
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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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All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes is but thy several liveries.
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“We may talk what we please,” he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, “of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles
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All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!
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This a scene of changes, and to be constant in Nature were inconstancy.
ABRAHAM COWLEY