TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index C > William Cowper Quotes

Thumbnail of William Cowper (source)
William Cowper
(26 Nov 1731 - 25 Apr 1800)

British poet whose works mingle quiet meditation with descriptions of rural life and natural scenery.

Science Quotes by William Cowper (11 quotes)

A fool must now and then be right, by chance
— William Cowper
In 'Conversation' (published 1782). In William Cowper and Humphrey Sumner Milford (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1905), 92.
Science quotes on:  |  Chance (244)  |  Fool (121)  |  Must (1525)  |  Right (473)  |  Truth (1109)

A shallow brain behind a serious mask,
An oracle within an empty cask.
— William Cowper
In 'Conversation', Table Talk: And Other Poems (1817), 155.
Science quotes on:  |  Behind (139)  |  Brain (281)  |  Empty (82)  |  Mask (12)  |  Oracle (5)  |  Serious (98)  |  Shallow (8)

Fires from beneath, and meteors from above,
Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,
Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' old
And crazy earth has had her shaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And nature, with a dim and sickly eye,
To wait the close of all?
Alluding the meteors of 17 Aug 1883.
— William Cowper
'The Time-Piece,' Task, Book ii, lines 58-66. In William Cowper, Henry Francis Cary, The Poetical Works of William Cowper (1863), 52-53.
Science quotes on:  |  Beacon (8)  |  Beneath (68)  |  Crazy (27)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Eye (440)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fit (139)  |  Meteor (19)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Old (499)  |  Planet (402)  |  Rest (287)  |  Time (1911)

Grief is itself a med’cine.
— William Cowper
'Charity' (published 1782). In William Cowper and Humphrey Sumner Milford (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1905), 79.
Science quotes on:  |  Grief (20)  |  Medicine (392)

How happy … does the sagacious investigator of nature seem, whose fancy is ever employed in the invention of hypotheses, and his reason in the support of them!
— William Cowper
From Letter (29 Sep 1783) to Rev. William Unwin, collected in William Cowper and William Hayley (ed.), The Life, and Posthumous Writings, of William Cowper (1803), Vol. 3, 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Employ (115)  |  Fancy (50)  |  Happy (108)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Invention (400)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Reason (766)  |  Sagacious (7)  |  Support (151)

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
— William Cowper
The Task, Book 6, 'The Winter Walk at Noon' (published 1785). In William Cowper and Humphrey Sumner Milford (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1905), 221.
Science quotes on:  |  Attentive (15)  |  Being (1276)  |  Connection (171)  |  Humble (54)  |  Know (1538)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Other (2233)  |  Thought (995)  |  Wisdom (235)

Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn,
That he who made it, and reveal'd its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
— William Cowper
The Task and Other Poems, Book III, The Garden (1785). In John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp (eds.), The Poems of William Cowper (1995), Vol. 2, 1782-1785, 166-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Extract (40)  |  Learn (672)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Register (22)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Solid (119)  |  Strata (37)

The vortices of Descartes, gave way to the gravitation of Newton... One generation blows bubbles, and the next breaks them.
— William Cowper
From Letter (29 Sep 1783) to Rev. William Unwin, collected in William Cowper and William Hayley (ed.), The Life, and Posthumous Writings, of William Cowper (1803), Vol. 3, 196.
Science quotes on:  |  Blow (45)  |  Break (109)  |  Bubble (23)  |  René Descartes (83)  |  Generation (256)  |  Gravitation (72)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (363)  |  Next (238)  |  Vortex (10)  |  Way (1214)

The heart may give a lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
— William Cowper
In Hialmer Day Gould, New Practical Spelling (1905), 14.
Science quotes on:  |  Book (413)  |  Give (208)  |  Grow (247)  |  Head (87)  |  Heart (243)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learning (291)  |  Lesson (58)  |  Wise (143)

To trace in Nature's most minute design
The signature and stamp of power divine.
...
The Invisible in things scarce seen revealed,
To whom an atom is an ample field.
— William Cowper
'Retirement' in William Cowper, Robert Southey, William Harvey, The Poetical Works of William Cowper (1854), 220.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (381)  |  Design (203)  |  Divine (112)  |  Field (378)  |  Invisible (66)  |  Minute (129)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Reveal (152)  |  Revealed (59)  |  Stamp (36)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Trace (109)

Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse;
Not more distinct from harmony divine,
The constant creaking of a country sign.
— William Cowper
Science quotes on:  |  Constant (148)  |  Converse (9)  |  Country (269)  |  Distinct (98)  |  Divine (112)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Linguistics (39)  |  More (2558)  |  Rehearse (4)  |  Rote (5)  |  Sign (63)  |  Talk (108)  |  Talking (76)  |  Word (650)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.