Abraham Cowley Quotes

47 quotes in 504 categories

• I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that ... I might be master at last of a small house…
• Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.
• This only grant me, that my means may lie, too low for envy, for contempt to high.
• The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty…
• God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
• May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, And many books, both true.
• Come, my best friends, my best books, and lead me on.
• Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
• Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.
• Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.
• 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;…
• Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise As praises from the men, whom all men praise.
• 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,…
• Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape Who dost in every country change thy shape!
• Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.
• The monster London laugh at me.
• Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.
• Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!
• What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?
• 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,…

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