Thomas Gray
26 quotes
Biography
"Full many a gem of purest ray sereneThe 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."
"I shall be but a shrimp of an author."
"Comus and his midnight crew."
"While bright-eyed Science watches round."
"And weep the more, because I weep in vain."
"The social smile, the sympathetic tear."
"Now as the Paradisiacal pleasures of the Mahometans consist in playing upon the flute and lying with Houris, be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon."
"Glance their many-twinkling feet."
"Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."
"Ah, tell them they are men!"
"Grim-visaged comfortless Despair."
"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn."
"Implores the passing tribute of a sigh."
"To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay."
"Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common use."
"Next day I dined with Johnson at Mr. Thrale's. He attacked Gray, calling him "a dull fellow." BOSWELL. "I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry." JOHNSON. "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull in every where. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet." He then repeated some ludicrous lines, which have escaped my memory, and said "Is not that GREAT, like his Odes?""
"Of all English poets he was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendour of which poetical style seems to be capable, if Virgil and his scholar Racine may be allowed to have united somewhat more ease with their elegance, no other poet approaches Gray in this kind of excellence. The degree of poetical invention diffused over such a style, the balance of taste and of fancy necessary to produce it, and the art with which an offensive boldness of imagery is polished away, are not indeed always perceptible to the common reader, nor do they convey to any mind the same species of gratification which is felt from the perusal of those poems which seem to be the unpremeditated effusions of enthusiasm; but to the eye of the critic, and more especially to the artist, they afford a new kind of pleasure, not incompatible with a distinct perception of the art employed, and somewhat similar to the grand emotions excited by the reflection on the skill and toil exerted in the construction of a magnificent palace. They can only be classed among the secondary pleasures of poetry, but they never can exist without a great degree of its higher excellencies."
"After the manner of Gilbert White, who, unknown to the poet, was making similar observations at Selborne, Gray kept a calendar in which he noted the opening of flowers and the arrival of birds."
"Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."
"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear."
"As to posterity I may ask what has it ever done to oblige me?"
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
"Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."