Thomas Gray Quotes about Pain

To each his suff'rings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan,- The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too

To each his suff'rings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan,- The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'T is folly to be wise.

Thomas Gray

Happiness, Wise, Pain

'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' (1747) l. 91

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.

Thomas Gray

Happiness, Pain, Blow

Thomas Campbell, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray (1872). “The Poetical Works of Campbell, Goldsmith and Gray: With Memoirs of the Authors”, p.391

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!

Thomas Gray

Life, Pain, Fate

Thomas Gray (1836). “The works of Thomas Gray (ed. by J. Mitford).”, p.28

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

Thomas Gray

Pain, Grief, Moving

1757 The Bard. A Pindaric Ode, l.128-30.

The applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes.

Thomas Gray

Pain, Eye, Land

Thomas Gray, John Mitford (1816). “The poems, with critical notes; a life of the author; and an essay on his poetry; by the Rev. John Mitford”, p.116