Quote

There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.

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
Pains
Poetic
Poets
Poet
Poetry
Pleasure
Pain

More quotes by William Cowper

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Pleasure admitted in undue degree, enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.
William Cowper
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[My kitten] is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know you will delight in her.
William Cowper
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Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they.
William Cowper
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How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
William Cowper
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A heretic, my dear sir, is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something neither of you knows anything about.
William Cowper
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O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!
William Cowper
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Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.
William Cowper
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As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone, And hides the ruin that it feeds upon, So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.
William Cowper
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It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
William Cowper
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No tree in all the grove but has its charms, Though each its hue peculiar.
William Cowper
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Still ending, and beginning still.
William Cowper
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True modesty is a discerning grace And only blushes in the proper place But counterfeit is blind, and skulks through fear, Where 'tis a shame to be asham'd t' appear: Humility the parent of the first, The last by vanity produc'd and nurs'd.
William Cowper
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Poor England! thou art a devoted deer, Beset with every ill but that of fear. The nations hunt all mock thee for a prey They swarm around thee, and thou stand'st at bay.
William Cowper
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A moral, sensible, and well-bred manWill not affront me, and no other can.
William Cowper
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If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one.
William Cowper
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When nations are to perish in their sins, 'tis in the Church the leprosy begins.
William Cowper
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To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, And hear His pardoning voice Changes a slave into a child, And duty into choice.
William Cowper
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The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown, And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own.
William Cowper
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Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
William Cowper
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I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
William Cowper