William Cowper quotes
William Cowper (1731–1800): English poet and hymnodist. The library holds 238 quotes by William Cowper, drawn from The Task, Conversation, Table Talk and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, faith, nature, truth, freedom, happiness
The best-known William Cowper quotes
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Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires. And introduces hunger, frost, and woe, Where peace and hospitality might reign.
The Task, Bk. II -
There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know.
The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 285 -
Variety’s the very spice of life. That gives it all its flavor.
The Timepiece: The Task, Bk. II -
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 40 -
My soul is sick with every day’s report of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
The Task -
Absence of occupation is not rest, A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.
Retirement, Line 623 -
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
The Task, Bk. VI -
Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid nature.
The Task, Book i. The Sofa. Line 181 -
Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.
The Task: Winter Walk at Noon -
The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
The Task, Book i. The Sofa. Line 506 -
How various his employments whom the world Calls idle, and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!
The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 352 -
And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.
Exhortation to Prayer -
I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish’d manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
The Task, Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon. Line 560 -
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.
Light shining out of Darkness -
An idler is a watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as if it stands.
Retirement, Line 681 -
In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war; Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze.
The Task: Winter Morning Walk -
Mountains interposed make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
The Task, Bk. II -
But war’s a game which were their subjects wise Kings would not play at.
The Task, Book v. The Winter Morning Walk. Line 187 -
From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.
The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 188 -
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the fall!
The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 41 -
’Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; And we are weeds without it.
The Task, Bk. V -
O Popular Applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?
The Task, Bk. II -
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.
The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 1 -
For ’tis a truth well known to most, That whatsoever thing is lost, We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right.
The Retired Cat -
God made the country, and man made the town.
The Task, Book i. The Sofa. Line 749 -
God made the country, and man made the town; What wonder then, that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threatened in the fields and groves.
The Task, Bk. I.: The Sofa -
Man in society is like a flower Blown in its native bed; ’tis there alone His faculties expanded in full bloom Shine out; there only reach their proper use.
The Task, Bk. iv., Line 659 -
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, Needs only to be seen to be admired.
Expostulation -
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam Excels a dunce that has been kept at home!
The Progress of Error, Line 415 -
The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
To an Afflicted Protestant Lady -
’Tis Providence alone secures In every change both mine and yours.
A Fable. Moral -
The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves, by thumping on your back, His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.
On Friendship -
Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
The Task -
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,—A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
Truth, Line 327 -
We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry and keeps our larder lean.
The Task -
The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
The Task -
Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man’s hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still: that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.
The Task -
War is a game which, were their subjects wise, kings should not play at.
The Task -
The darkest day, live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
Needless Alarm -
Detested sport, that owes its pleasures to another’s pain.
The Task -
I seek divine simplicity in him who handles things divine.
The Task -
He that holds fast the golden mean, And lives contentedly between The little and the great, Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, Nor plagues that haunt the rich man’s door.
Translation of Horace, Book ii. Ode x Disputed attribution -
Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God.
The Task -
What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.
Walking with God -
What is it but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
The Task, Book iv. The Winter Evening. Line 55 -
But who with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all.
The Task, Bk. V. Winter Morning Walk -
Dream after dream ensues, And still they dream that they shall still succeed And still are disappointed.
The Task -
Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause.
The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 231 -
I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.
The Task, Bk. II -
He ‘stablishes the strong, restores the weak, Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart.
The Timepiece: The Task, Bk. II -
That though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind.
History of John Gilpin -
Silently as a dream the fabric rose, No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
The Task, Book v. The Winter Morning Walk. Line 144 -
Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.
The Task, Bk. iii., Line 161 -
Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
The Task -
A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.
Olney Hymns -
I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.
The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 29 -
Silently as a dream the fabric rose, No sound of hammer or of saw was there. Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined.
The Task: Winter Morning Walk -
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade.
The Task, Bk. ii., Line 1 -
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
Table Talk, Line 260 -
Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hoodwink’d.
The Task, Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon. Line 101
Where these quotes come from
- The Task (76 quotes)
- Conversation (17 quotes)
- Table Talk (14 quotes)
- Retirement (9 quotes)
- Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (5 quotes)
- The Progress of Error (4 quotes)
- Truth (3 quotes)
- History of John Gilpin (3 quotes)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .