165 Quotes by Thomas Gray

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Where ignorance is bliss,'Tis folly to be wise.- Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade, Ah, fields belov'd 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, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to soothe, And, redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring.

The generous spark extinct revive,Teach me to love and to forgive,Exact my own defects to scan,What others are, to feel, and to know myself a Man.- Hymn to Adversity

Here rests his head upon the lap of earthA youth to fortune and to fame unknown.Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,And Melancholy marked him for her own.

I shall be but a shrimp of an author.

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.

Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

The hues of bliss more brightly glow, Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe.