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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.

Abraham Cowley

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Abraham Cowley
Age: 49 †
Born: 1618
Born: January 1
Died: 1667
Died: July 28
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
the City
Enough
Despise
Must
Vanity
World
Solitude
People
Virtue
Knowledge
Used
Wells
Well
Foolishness

More quotes by Abraham Cowley

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For the whole world, without a native home, Is nothing but a prison of larger room.
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Books should, not Business, entertain the Light And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.
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The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.
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Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.
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Much will always wanting be To him who much desires.
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Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning's gentle wine! 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
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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, Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.
Abraham Cowley
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Why to mute fish should'st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, thy no less silent lover?
Abraham Cowley
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I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that ... 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.
Abraham Cowley
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God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
Abraham Cowley
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Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
Abraham Cowley
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Gold begets in brethren hate Gold in families debate Gold does friendship separate Gold does civil wars create.
Abraham Cowley
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s a scene of changes, and to be constant in Nature were inconstancy.
Abraham Cowley
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Life is an incurable disease.
Abraham Cowley
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There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.
Abraham Cowley
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Nothing in Nature's sober found, But an eternal Health goes round. Fill up the Bowl then, fill it high-- Fill all the Glasses there for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?
Abraham Cowley
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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? Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, Thou who art under ground to lie? Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see, For death, alas! is reaping thee.
Abraham Cowley
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Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
Abraham Cowley
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Thus each extreme to equal danger tends, Plenty, as well as Want, can sep'rate friends.
Abraham Cowley
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The monster London laugh at me.
Abraham Cowley