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.
ABRAHAM COWLEYThe liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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The present is an eternal now.
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Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.
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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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Hope! fortune’s cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!
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Awake, awake, my Lyre!And tell thy silent master’s humble taleIn sounds that may prevail;Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire
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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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His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I’m sure, was in the right.
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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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His time’s forever, everywhere his place.
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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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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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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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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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God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
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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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Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!
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I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature.
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It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader’s ear to hear anything of praise from him.
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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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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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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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The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
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Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
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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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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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Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?
ABRAHAM COWLEY