Quote

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

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William Cowper
Age: 68 †
Born: 1731
Born: November 26
Died: 1800
Died: April 25
Hymnwriter
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Translator
Writer
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
Little
Stewardship
Everything
Strange
Life
Existence
Purpose
Squandering
Happiness
Bargaining
Comes
Bargain
True
Owes
Littles
Bargains

More quotes by William Cowper

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Great offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
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And the tear that is wiped with a little address, May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
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When scandal has new-minted an old lie, Or tax'd invention for a fresh supply, 'Tis call'd a satire, and the world appears Gathering around it with erected ears A thousand names are toss'd into the crowd, Some whisper'd softly, and some twang'd aloud, Just as the sapience of an author's brain, Suggests it safe or dangerous to be plain.
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Spare feast! a radish and an egg.
William Cowper
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I am out of humanity's reach.
William Cowper
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Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
William Cowper
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The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.
William Cowper
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To impute our recovery to medicine, and to carry our view no further, is to rob God of His honor, and is saying in effect that He has parted with the keys of life and death, and, by giving to a drug the power to heal us, has placed our lives out of His own reach.
William Cowper
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Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too.
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We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean.
William Cowper
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Defend me, therefore, common sense, say From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.
William Cowper
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Not a flower But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain, Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes In grains as countless as the seaside sands, The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth Happy who walks with him!
William Cowper
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Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word!
William Cowper
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God never meant that man should scale the Heavens By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wondrous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather where his mercy shines.
William Cowper
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They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
William Cowper
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Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
William Cowper
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Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze.
William Cowper
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Unmissed but by his dogs and by his groom.
William Cowper
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How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once--through inexperience, as we now perceive--we missed that happiness we might have found!
William Cowper
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And diff'ring judgments serve but to declare that truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.
William Cowper