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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  4517 William Cowper 1731-1800 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

4517 William Cowper 1731-1800 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:4517
AUTHOR:William Cowper (1731–1800)
QUOTATION:From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up. 1
ATTRIBUTION:The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 188.
 
Note 1.
He has spent all his life in letting down buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.—Lady Holland’s Memoir of Sydney Smith, vol. i. p. 259. [back]