Abraham Cowley Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature."

"Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make"

"Love in her sunny eyes does basking play;/ Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair;/ Love does on both her lips for ever stray;/ And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there./ In all her outward parts Love's always seen;/ But, oh, he never went within."

"For why / Should every creature drink but I, / Why, man of morals, tell me why?"

"Thus each extreme to equal danger tends, Plenty, as well as Want, can sep'rate friends"

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

"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."

"Life is an incurable disease"

"I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night, to-morrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today."