Why to mute fish should’st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, thy no less silent lover?
ABRAHAM COWLEYNothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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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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I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.
ABRAHAM COWLEY -
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.
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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?
ABRAHAM COWLEY -
I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that
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Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.
ABRAHAM COWLEY -
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!
ABRAHAM COWLEY -
All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!
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Coy Nature, (which remain’d, though aged grown, A beauteous virgin still, enjoy’d by none, Nor seen unveil’d by anyone),
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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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Much will always wanting be To him who much desires.
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The Sunflow’r, thinking ’twas for him foul shame To nap by daylight, strove t’ excuse the blame
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It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, But too great weight and largeness of his head.
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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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Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.
ABRAHAM COWLEY






