Edward Young

Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.

Sourced

• In records that defy the tooth of time.
  • The Statesman's Creed

• Great let me call him, for he conquered me.
  • The Revenge, Act I, sc. i (1721)

• Life is the desert, life the solitude;
  Death joins us to the great majority.
  • The Revenge, Act IV, sc. i

• Souls made of fire, and children of the sun,
  With whom revenge is virtue.
  • The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii

• The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
  The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
  • The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii

• In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.
  • A Vindication of Providence; or, A True Estimate of Human Life (1728)

• The man that makes a character makes foes.
  • To Mr. Pope, epistle I, l. 28 (1730)

• Their feet through faithless leather met the dirt,
  And oftener chang'd their principles than shirt.
  • To Mr. Pope, epistle I, l. 277

• There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired.
  • Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) p. 28.

Love of Fame (1725-1728)

• When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.
  • Satire I, l. 17

• The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art,
  Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.
  • Satire I, l. 51

• Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
  And think they grow immortal as they quote.
  • Satire I, l. 89

• Titles are marks of honest men, and wise;
  The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
  • Satire I, l. 145

• They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
  Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
  • Satire I, l. 147

• None think the great unhappy but the great.
  • Satire I, l. 238

• The booby father craves a booby son,
  And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.
  • Satire II, l. 165

• Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d,
  And men talk only to conceal the mind.
  • Satire II, l. 207

• Be wise with speed;
  A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
  • Satire II, l. 282

• With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue,
  Forever most divinely in the wrong.
  • Satire VI, l. 105

• For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
  Nor take her tea without a strategem.
  • Satire VI, l. 187

• Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
  Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
  And trifles life.
  • Satire VI, l. 208

• 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.
  • Satire VII, l. 55

Night Thoughts (1742-1745)

• Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
  • Night I, l. 1

• Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
  In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
  Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
  • Night I, l. 18

• Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse
  Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
  An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
  • Night I, l. 23

• The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
  But from its loss.
  • Night I, l. 55

• Be wise today; 'tis madness to defer.
  • Night I, l. 390

• Procrastination is the thief of time.
  • Night I, l. 393

• 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.
  • Night I, l. 417

• All men think all men mortal but themselves.
  • Night I, l. 424

• He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
  • Night II, l. 24

• Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed:
  Who does the best his circumstance allows
  Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
  • Night II, l. 90

• Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself
  Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
  • Night II, l. 112

• Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd;
  He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.
  • Night II, l. 160.

• Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
  Hell threatens.
  • Night II, l. 292

• ’Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,
  And ask them what report they bore to heaven.
  • Night II, l. 376

• Thoughts shut up want air,
  And spoil, like bales unopen’d to the sun.
  • Night II, l. 466

• A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
  • Night II, l. 571

• Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new
  (Not such was his) is neither strong nor pure.
  • Night II, l. 582

• How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
  • Night II, l. 602

• The chamber where the good man meets his fate
  Is privileg’d beyond the common walk
  Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
  • Night II, l. 633

• A death-bed ’s a detector of the heart.
  • Night II, l. 641

• Virtue alone has majesty in death.
  • Night II, l. 650

• Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes;
  They love a train, they tread each other’s heel.
  • Night III, l. 63

• Beautiful as sweet!
  And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
  And gay as soft! and innocent as gay.
  • Night III, l. 81

• Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
  And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
  Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
  • Night III, l. 104

• Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself
  That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.
  • Night III, l. 226

• Man makes a death which Nature never made.
  • Night IV, l. 15

• And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
  • Night IV, l. 17

• Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.
  • Night IV, l. 71

• Man wants little, nor that little long.
  • Night IV, l. 118

• A God all mercy is a God unjust.
  • Night IV, l. 233

• ’Tis impious in a good man to be sad
  • Night IV, l. 676

• Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
  • Night IV, l. 843

• By night an atheist half believes a God.
  • Night V, l. 177

• Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
  • Night V, l. 441

• A soul without reflection, like a pile
  Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
  • Night V, l. 596

• We see time’s furrows on another’s brow,
  And death intrench’d, preparing his assault;
  How few themselves in that just mirror see!
  • Night V, l. 627

• Like our shadows,
  Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
  • Night V, l. 661

• While man is growing, life is in decrease;
  And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
  Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
  • Night V, l. 717

• The man of wisdom is the man of years.
  • Night V, l. 775

• Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
  • Night V, l. 1011

• Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.
  • Night VI, l. 128

• Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps;
  And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
  Each man makes his own stature, builds himself.
  Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids;
  Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
  • Night VI, l. 309

• Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
  • Night VI, l. 399

• Much learning shows how little mortals know;
  Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
  • Night VI, l. 519

• And all may do what has by man been done.
  • Night VI, l. 606

• The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
  • Night VII, l. 496

• What ardently we wish we soon believe.
  • Night VII, l. 1311

• Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
  • Night VIII, l. 215

• Truth never was indebted to a lie.
  • Night VIII, l. 587

• The house of laughter makes a house of woe.
  • Night VIII, l. 757

• A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
  • Night VIII, l. 793

• Final Ruin fiercely drives
  Her plowshare o'er creation.
  • Night IX, l. 167

• An undevout astronomer is mad.
  • Night IX, l. 771

• The course of Nature is the art of God.
  • Night IX, l. 1267

Misattributed

• By all means use some time to be alone.
  • A slight misquotation of George Herbert "The Church Porch", line 145: "By all means use sometimes to be alone", in The Temple (1633).

• The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
  • Widely attributed to Edward Young, but in fact written by E. B. White in Harper's Magazine (December 1940), and reprinted in his One Man's Meat (1942).

• They only babble who practise not reflection.
  • From Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, Act I, sc. i.

• Tomorrow is a satire on today,
  And shows its weakness.
  • This is a quotation from "The Old Man's Relapse", a poem addressed to Edward Young, but written by Lord Melcombe.