Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Cowper
Age: 68 †
Born: 1731
Born: November 26
Died: 1800
Died: April 25
Hymnwriter
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Translator
Writer
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
Great
Despise
Men
Resolution
Shame
Attitude
Half
Strong
Littles
Little

More quotes by William Cowper

Image
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
Image
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
William Cowper
Image
That good diffused may more abundant grow.
William Cowper
Image
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
Image
Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break, With blessings on your head
William Cowper
Image
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,- A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
William Cowper
Image
Where men of judgment creep and feel their way, The positive pronounce without dismay.
William Cowper
Image
A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.
William Cowper
Image
There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.
William Cowper
Image
The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.
William Cowper
Image
O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!
William Cowper
Image
Scenes must be beautiful which daily view'd Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.
William Cowper
Image
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
Image
But poverty, with most who whimper forth Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe The effect of laziness, or sottish write.
William Cowper
Image
No traveler e'er reached that blest abode who found not thorns and briers in his road.
William Cowper
Image
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk, Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk, Is always happy, reign whoever may, And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away.
William Cowper
Image
We bear our shades about us self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree.
William Cowper
Image
The parable of the prodigal son, the most beautiful fiction that ever was invented our Saviour's speech to His disciples, with which He closed His earthly ministrations, full of the sublimest dignity and tenderest affection, surpass everything that I ever read and like the spirit by which they were dictated, fly directly to the heart.
William Cowper
Image
Misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case.
William Cowper
Image
... she, that will with kittens jest, Should bear a kitten's joke.
William Cowper