The bell strikes one. We take no note of time, but from its loss. To give it then a tongue is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, it is the knell of my departed hours. Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. It is the signal that demands despatch; how much is to be done!
—Edward Young
Topics: Time
Most of our comforts grow up between our crosses.
—Edward Young
Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
—Edward Young
Topics: Emotions
Death is the crown of life.—Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; to live would not be life; even fools would wish to die.
—Edward Young
Topics: Death
Mine is the night, with all her stars.
—Edward Young
Topics: Night
An angel’s arm can’t snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can’t confine me there.
—Edward Young
Souls made of fire and children of the sun,With whom Revenge is virtue.
—Edward Young
Topics: Revenge
Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels and how heavily we drag the load of life.—It is our curse, like that of Cain; it makes us wander earth around to fly that tyrant, thought.
—Edward Young
Topics: Leisure
Where nature’s end of language is declined,And men talk only to conceal the mind
—Edward Young
Topics: Language
Friendship is the wine of life: but friendship new… is neither strong nor pure
—Edward Young
Topics: Wine
A father’s heart is tender, though the man’s is made of stone.
—Edward Young
Topics: Love
Reason is progressive; instinct is complete; swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
—Edward Young
Topics: Reason
Life is the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority.
—Edward Young
O sacred solitude! divine retreat! choice of the prudent! envy of the great! by thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade, we count fair wisdom.
—Edward Young
Topics: Solitude
All men think all mortal but themselves.
—Edward Young
Count that day lost, whose slow descending sun views from thine hand no worthy action done.
—Edward Young
Topics: Time
Satire! thou shining supplement of public laws.
—Edward Young
‘Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours and ask them what report they bore to heaven, and how they might have borne more welcome news.
—Edward Young
Topics: Meditation
Life’s cares are comforts; such by heaven design’d; he that hath none must make them, or be wretched; cares are employments; and without employ the soul is on the rack; the rack of rest, to souls most adverse; action all their joy.
—Edward Young
Topics: Employment
In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.
—Edward Young
Topics: Action, Wisdom
Talents, angel bright, if wanting worth, are shining instruments in false ambition’s hand, to render faults illustrious, and give infamy renown.
—Edward Young
Topics: Talent
The future… seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
—Edward Young
Topics: Adversity, Future
They talk of morals, O, thou bleeding lamb! the grand morality is love to thee!
—Edward Young
Topics: Morality
Where is the dust that has not been alive?—The spade and the plough disturb our ancestors.—From human mold we reap our daily bread.
—Edward Young
Topics: Earth
Faith is not only a means of obeying, but a principal act of obedience; not only an altar on which to sacrifice, but a sacrifice itself, and perhaps, of all, the greatest. It is a submission of our understandings; an oblation of our idolized reason to God, which he requires so indispensably, that our whole will and affections, though seemingly a larger sacrifice, will not, without it, be received at his hands.
—Edward Young
Topics: Faith
Too low they build who build below the skies.
—Edward Young
Topics: Ambition
What tender force, what dignity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature; around that neck what dross are gold and pearl!
—Edward Young
Topics: Beauty
Praise, more divine than prayer; prayer points our ready path to heaven; praise is already there.
—Edward Young
Topics: Praise
Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords light but not heat; it leaves you undevout, and frozen at heart, while speculation shines.
—Edward Young
Topics: Knowledge
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.
—Edward Young
Topics: Immortality
None think the great unhappy but the great.
—Edward Young
Topics: Reality, Unhappiness, Happiness, Opportunities
High stations tumult, not bliss create.—None think the great unhappy, but the great.
—Edward Young
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
Poor in abundance, famished at a feast.
—Edward Young
Topics: Discontent
Nature is the glass reflecting God, as by the sea reflected is the sun, too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere.
—Edward Young
Topics: Nature
Man wants but little, nor that little long.—How soon must he resign his very dust, which frugal nature lent him for an hour.
—Edward Young
Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time’s enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root.
—Edward Young
Topics: Time
He that is ungrateful has no guilt but one; all other crimes may pass for virtues in him.
—Edward Young
Topics: Ingratitude
Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
—Edward Young
Topics: Learning, Wealth, Riches
Age should fly concourse, cover in repeat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon.
—Edward Young
Topics: Age
If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain.
—Edward Young
Topics: Heart