Quotes from Abraham Cowley

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Hope! fortune's cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!

Hope! of all ills that men endure The only cheap and universal cure.

Hope! Of all the ills that men endure the only cheap and universal cure.

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

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

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.

Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.

Fill the bowl with rosy wine, around our temples roses twine, And let us cheerfully awhile, like wine and roses, smile.

Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!

Thus would I double my life's fading space;For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.

Life for delays and doubts no time does give, None ever yet made haste enough to live.

Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.

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

His time's forever, everywhere his place.

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.

Enjoy the present hour Be thankful for the past And neither fear nor wish Th' approaches of the last.

Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie and teach that truth is truest poesy.

I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.

Plenty, as well as Want, can separate friends.

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

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

Gold begets in brethren hate; Gold in families debate; Gold does friendship separate; Gold does civil wars create.