Edward Young Quotes

What is a miracle?--'Tis a reproach, 'Tis an implicit satire on mankind; And while it satisfies, it censures too.

As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.

The man of wisdom is the man of years.

When men of infamy to grandeur soar, They light a torch to show their shame the more.

A death-bed's a detector of the heart.

Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!

The first sure symptom of a mind in health Is rest of heart and pleasure felt at home.

By all means use some time to be alone.

The maid that loves goes out to sea upon a shattered plank, and puts her trust in miracles for safety.

He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.

The soft whispers of the God in man.

Accept a miracle, instead of wit See two dull lines, with Stanhope's pencil writ.

Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.

Britannia's shame! There took her gloomy flight, On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul . Less base the fear of death than fear of life. O Britain! infamous for suicide.

When men once reach their autumn, sickly joys fall off apace, as yellow leaves from trees

O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, Lost to the noble sallies of the soul! Who think it solitude to be alone.

Man wants but little, nor that little long; How soon must he resign his very dust, Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!

A strange alternative * * *Must women have a doctor or a dance?

Nothing but what astonishes is true.

A dedication is a wooden leg.

[The] public path of life Is dirty.

Polite diseases make some idiots vain, Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.

A tardy vengeance shares the tyrant's guilt.

This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun, Those skies, thro' which it rolls, must all have end. What then is man? The smallest part of nothing.

Midway from Nothing to the Deity!

Who gives an empire, by the gift defeats All end of giving; and procures contempt Instead of gratitude.

O let me be undone the common way, And have the common comfort to be pity'd, And not be ruin'd in the mask of bliss, And so be envy'd, and be wretched too!

Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor; Part with it as with money, sparing; pay No moment but in purchase of its worth, And what it's worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.

Live now; be damn'd hereafter.

With fame, in just proportion, envy grows.

The spirit walks of every day deceased.

Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast.

Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, Was e'er created solely for itself.

Joys season'd high, and tasting strong of guilt.

One eye on death, and one full fix'd on heaven.

Tis immortality, 'tis that alone, Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. That only, and that amply this performs.

A Deity believed, is joy begun; A Deity adored, is joy advanced; A Deity beloved, is joy matured. Each branch of piety delight inspires.

Who can take Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat.

Old men love novelties; the last arriv'd Still pleases best; the youngest steals their smiles.

We wish our names eternally to live; Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought, Had not our natures been eternal too.

The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.

Who combats with a brother, wounds himself.

The weak have remedies, the wise have joys; superior wisdom is superior bliss.

Wonder is involuntary praise.

How science dwindles, and how volumes swell, How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun!

Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue.

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.

None think the great unhappy, but the great.

A God all mercy is a God unjust.