Thomas Gray Quotes - Page 2

Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, A youth to fortune and to fame unknown: Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

The different steps and degrees of education may be compared to the artificer's operations upon marble; it is one thing to dig it out of the quarry, and another to square it, to give it gloss and lustre, call forth every beautiful spot and vein, shape it into a column, or animate it into a statue.

And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest.

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

T'was Spring, t'was Summer, all was gay Now Autumn bears a cloud brow The flowers of Spring are swept way And Summer fruits desert the bough

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait! Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, They mock the air with idle state.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly rising o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.

I shall be but a shrimp of an author.

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow.

The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.

Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of their little reign, And unknown regions date descry.

Man's feeble race what ills await! Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!

To contemplation's sober eye, Such is the race of man; And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began, Alike the busy and the gay, But flutter through life's little day.

We frolic while 'tis May.

In buskined measures move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.

Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far,-but far above the great.

And weep the more, because I weep in vain.

Along the cool sequestered vale of life, They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best!

No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God.