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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
People
Virtue
Knowledge
Used
Wells
Well
Foolishness
Enough
Despise
Must
Vanity
World
Solitude

More quotes by Abraham Cowley

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The getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey.
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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The Sunflow'r, thinking 'twas for him foul shame To nap by daylight, strove t' excuse the blame It was not sleep that made him nod, he said, But too great weight and largeness of his head.
Abraham Cowley
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We may talk what we please, he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles, in fields d'or or d'argent but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.
Abraham Cowley
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Awake, awake, my Lyre!And tell thy silent master's humble taleIn sounds that may prevailSounds that gentle thoughts inspire:Though so exalted sheAnd I so lowly beTell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
Abraham Cowley
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His time's forever, everywhere his place.
Abraham Cowley
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When Israel was from bondage led,Led by the Almighty's handFrom out of foreign land,The great sea beheld and fled.
Abraham Cowley
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Curs'd be that wretch (Death's factor sure) who brought Dire swords into the peaceful world, and taught Smiths (who before could only make The spade, the plough-share, and the rake) Arts, in most cruel wise Man's left to epitomize!
Abraham Cowley
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Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?
Abraham Cowley
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Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!
Abraham Cowley
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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.
Abraham Cowley
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Life for delays and doubts no time does give, None ever yet made haste enough to live.
Abraham Cowley
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Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.
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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His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
Abraham Cowley
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To-day is ours what do we fear? To-day is ours we have it here. Let's treat it kindly, that it may Wish, at least, with us to stay. Let's banish business, banish sorrow To the gods belong to-morrow.
Abraham Cowley
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Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.
Abraham Cowley
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This only grant me, that my means may lie, too low for envy, for contempt to high.
Abraham Cowley
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The present is an eternal now.
Abraham Cowley
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Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.
Abraham Cowley