Top 240 Quotes & Sayings by Edward Young

By night an atheist half believes in a God.

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

Life is the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority.

Virtue alone has majesty in death.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.

Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live forever? Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all? This is a miracle; and that no more.

Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little wordlings enjoy.

Wise it is to comprehend the whole.

A friend is worth all hazards we can run.

One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.

All men think all men mortal, but themselves.

Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.

The man that makes a character, makes foes.

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

All men think that all men are mortal but themselves.

The course of Nature is the art of God.

Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform.

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Friendship's the wine of life: but friendship new... is neither strong nor pure.

Read nature; nature is a friend to truth.

Wishing of all employments is the worst.

They only babble who practise not reflection.

The purpose firm is equal to the deed.

None think the great unhappy, but the great.

A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Our birth is nothing but our death begun, As tapers waste the moment they take fire.

There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.

Less base the fear of death than fear of life.

A God all mercy is a God unjust.

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

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.

Truth never was indebted to a lie.

By all means use some time to be alone.

The house of laughter makes a house of woe.

Procrastination is the thief of time.

A Christian is the highest style of man.

How blessings brighten as they take their flight.

An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can't confine me there.

Wonder is involuntary praise.

The soul of man was made to walk the skies.

Too low they build who build below the skies.

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels; how heavily we drag the load of life!

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

Mine is the night, with all her stars.

As soon as we have found the key of life, it opens the gates of death.

Procrastination is the thief of time; year after year it steals, till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal state. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; at fifty chides his infamous delay, pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; in all the magnanimity of thought, resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.

Be wise to-day; 't is madness to defer.

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?

The course of Nature is the art of God

Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor ; who lives to fancy, never can be rich.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!... Midway from nothing to the Deity!

Sweet instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.

Man makes a death which Nature never made. And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.

Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?