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It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ear to hear anything of praise from him.

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
Anything
Ears
Hard
Praise
Heart
Subject
Men
Subjects
Reader
Grates
Hear
Disparagement
Nice
Grate
Speak
Egotism

More quotes by Abraham Cowley

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Man is too near all kinds of beasts,--a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.
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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Hope! fortune's cheating lottery when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!
Abraham Cowley
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Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
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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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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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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For the whole world, without a native home, Is nothing but a prison of larger room.
Abraham Cowley
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Life is an incurable disease.
Abraham Cowley
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Nay, in death's hand, the grape-stone proves As strong as thunder is in Jove's.
Abraham Cowley
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Poets by Death are conquer'd but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.
Abraham Cowley
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Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie and teach that truth is truest poesy.
Abraham Cowley
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There is some help for all the defects of fortune for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.
Abraham Cowley
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Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.
Abraham Cowley
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The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
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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The world's a scene of changes.
Abraham Cowley
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Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
Abraham Cowley
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All this world's noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!
Abraham Cowley
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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