The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.
WILLIAM COWPERAn idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.
More William Cowper Quotes
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Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth.
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Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
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He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not color’d like his own, and having pow’r T’ enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
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The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flow’r. Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.
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Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up his bright designs,
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How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.
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After long drought when rains abundant fall, He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.
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Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
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What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.
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God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to performs
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There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.
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Great offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
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The man to solitude accustom’d long, Perceives in everything that lives a tongue; Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees Have speech for him, and understood with ease,
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Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
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Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
WILLIAM COWPER