Quotes from Abraham Cowley

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.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,And drinks, and gapes for drink again.The plants suck in the earth, and areWith constant drinking fresh and fair.

A mighty pain to love it is,And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;But of all pains, the greatest painIt is to love, but love in vain.

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.

Ah yet, ere I descend to the graveMay I a small house and large garden have;And a few friends, and many books, both true,Both wise, and both delightful too!

God the first garden made, and the first city.

What shall I do to be forever known,And make the age to come my own?

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,But an eternal now does always last.

Well then; I now do plainly seeThis busy world and I shall ne'er agree;The very honey of all earthly joyDoes of all meats the soonest cloy,And they (methinks) deserve my pity,Who for it can endure the stings,The crowd, and buzz and murmurings,Of this great hive, the city.

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,Have ye not seen us walking every day?Was there a tree about which did not knowThe love betwixt us two?

This only grant me, that my means may lieToo low for envy, for contempt too high.

Life is an incurable disease.

Nothing is to come, and nothing past: But an eternal now, does always last.

Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.

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.

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.

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

s a scene of changes, and to be constant in Nature were inconstancy.

The world's a scene of changes and to be constant in nature is inconstancy.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.

For the whole world, without a native home, Is nothing but a prison of larger room.

As for being much known by sight, and pointed out, I cannot comprehend the honor that lies withal; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor.

Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.