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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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Abraham Cowley
Age: 49 †
Born: 1618
Born: January 1
Died: 1667
Died: July 28
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
the City
May
Wishes
Men
Length
Fortune
Cutting
Shorter
Help
Defects
Wish
Attain
Helping
Remedy
Cannot
Contentment

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God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
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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.
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Hope! fortune's cheating lottery when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!
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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 I have lived today.
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Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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s a scene of changes, and to be constant in Nature were inconstancy.
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All this world's noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!
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Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrow draw out all our store, Till the exhausted well can yield no more.
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Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me.
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Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
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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.
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And I myself a Catholic will be, So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee. Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow On us, the Poets militant below.
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A mighty pain to love it is, And 'tis a pain that pain to miss But, of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, but love in vain.
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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.
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Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.
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What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?
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