“How much a dunce that has been sent to roam / Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.”

— William Cowper, The Progress of Error, l. 415, 1782

About William Cowper

1731 – 1800

English poet and hymnwriter, author of "The Task".

“Still ending, and beginning still.”

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the lands where sorrow is unknown.”

“Domestic happiness, thou only bliss of Paradise that has surviv'd the fall!”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

“Go where he will, the wise man is at home, his hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.”

“The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.”

“Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”