Zitate von Edward Young

„Der Aufschub ist ein Dieb der Zeit.“

—  Edward Young

Klagen, 1. Nacht. In: Klagen, oder Nachtgedanken über Leben, Tod, und Unsterblichkeit. Übersetzt von Johann Arnold Ebert. Band 1. Leipzig: Schwickert, 1790, S. 64 f., Vers 392
Original engl.: "Procrastination is the Thief of Time."

„Der Mensch braucht nur wenig; und auch dieses Wenige nicht lange.“

—  Edward Young

Klagen, 4. Nacht. In: Klagen, oder Nachtgedanken über Leben, Tod, und Unsterblichkeit. Übersetzt von Johann Arnold Ebert. Band 1. Leipzig: Schwickert, 1790, S. 284 f., Vers 118
Original engl.: "Man wants but Little; nor that Little, long."

„Thoughts shut up want air,
And spoil, like bales unopen’d to the sun.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 466.

„The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 55.

„Friendship is the wine of life.“

—  Edward Young

„Affliction is a good man's shining time.“

—  Edward Young

„A foe to God was never true friend to man“

—  Edward Young

„And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 17.

„To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII, Line 1045.

„Final Ruin fiercely drives
Her plowshare o'er creation.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IX, Line 167. Compare Robert Burns, To a Mountain Daisy: "Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate / Full on thy bloom".

„He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?“

—  Edward Young

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 271.

„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.“

—  Edward Young

Satire VII, l. 55.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

„An undevout astronomer is mad.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IX, Line 771.

„The booby father craves a booby son,
And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.“

—  Edward Young

Satire II, l. 165.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

„On reason build resolve,
that column of true majesty in man.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 30.

„Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
Hell threatens.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 292.

„Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.“

—  Edward Young

Busiris (1719), Act V, sc. i.

„Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.“

—  Edward Young, Night-Thoughts

Quelle: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night IV, Line 843.

„As Love alone can exquisitely bless,
Love only feels the marvellous of pain;
Opens new veins of torture in the soul,
And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.“

—  Edward Young

The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.