Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, Thou who art under ground to lie? Thou sow’st and plantest, but no fruit must see, For death, alas! is reaping thee.
ABRAHAM COWLEYFill all the Glasses there; for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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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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The present is an eternal now.
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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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Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
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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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Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; ‘Tis fill’d wherever thou dost tread, Nature’s self’s thy Ganymede.
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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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Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,
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Life is an incurable disease.
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Nay, in death’s hand, the grape-stone proves As strong as thunder is in Jove’s.
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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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Thus would I double my life’s fading space;For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.
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Enjoy the present hour, Be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish Th’ approaches of the last.
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The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.
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To-day is ours; what do we fear? To-day is ours; we have it here. Let’s treat it kindly, that it may Wish, at least, with us to stay.
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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.
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A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But, of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, but love in vain.
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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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Thus each extreme to equal danger tends, Plenty, as well as Want, can sep’rate friends.
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The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
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Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
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Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie and teach that truth is truest poesy.
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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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Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
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Poets by Death are conquer’d but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.
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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.
ABRAHAM COWLEY