Edward Young (3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.
Ne'er to meet, or ne'er to part, is peace.
The course of Nature is the art of God
Not all the pride of beauty; Those eyes, that tell us what the sun is made of; Those lips, whose touch is to be bought with life; Those hills of driven snow, which seen are felt: All these possessed are nought, but as they are The proof, the substance of an inward passion, And the rich plunder of a taken heart.
Who can take Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat.
'T is greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven.
Angels are men of a superior kind; Angels are men in lighter habit clad.
Men before you have quit smoking - you can too!
Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! He, like the world, his ready visit pays Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes.
O let me be undone the common way, And have the common comfort to be pity'd, And not be ruin'd in the mask of bliss, And so be envy'd, and be wretched too!
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight.
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
By night an atheist half-believes in God.
Beautiful as sweet, And young as beautiful, and soft as young, And gay as soft, and innocent as gay!
And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss.
Distinguisht Link in Being's endless Chain! Midway from Nothing to the Deity!
Let no man trust the first false step of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, whose steep descent in last perdition ends.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.
How science dwindles, and how volumes swell, How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun!