To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance. Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not. He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows. Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world. |
