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.
ABRAHAM COWLEYMan 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.
More Abraham Cowley Quotes
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Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
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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.
ABRAHAM COWLEY -
Poets by Death are conquer’d but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.
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Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!
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God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
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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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Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
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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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Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?
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As for being much known by sight, and pointed out, I cannot comprehend the honor that lies withal; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor.
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All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes is but thy several liveries.
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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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Much will always wanting be To him who much desires.
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Gold begets in brethren hate; Gold in families debate; Gold does friendship separate; Gold does civil wars create.
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The world’s a scene of changes.
ABRAHAM COWLEY