Date: 1785

The mind may be "polish'd"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Virtue is like a "lowly creeping, modest and yet fair" plant that thrives most "where little seen"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

The mind may be pregnant "with some new theme"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Man in society is like a flower: "'Tis there alone / His faculties expanded in full bloom/ Shine out"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

The "love of Nature's works" "is a flame that dies not even there / Where nothing feeds it"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"All constraint, / Except what wisdom lays on evil men, / Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes / Their progress in the road of science; blinds / The eyesight of discovery, and begets / In those that suffer it, a sordid mind."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

A meagre intellect is "unfit / To be tenant of man's noble form"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: "as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Knowledge and wisdom dwell in the head: knowledge in "heads replete with thoughts of other men" and wisdom "in minds attentive of their own"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"Who then that has a mind well strung and tuned / To contemplation, and within his reach / A scene so friendly to his favourite task, / Would waste attention at the chequer'd board, / His host of wooden warriors to and fro / Marching and counter-marching, with an eye / As fixt as marble, with a f...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)