Visions of glory, spare my aching sight! Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
Thomas GrayRead
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
Interpretation
This quote questions the power of honor and flattery in the face of death.
Thomas Gray's quote reflects on the futility of honor and flattery when confronted with the inevitability of death. It suggests that no amount of praise or recognition can penetrate the silence of death, highlighting the ultimate powerlessness of worldly accolades in the face of mortality.
In practice
This quote could be used in a eulogy to emphasize the importance of character over accolades.
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight! Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
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.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
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.
Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,/ The bee's collected treasure sweet,/ Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet/ The still small voice of gratitude.
I think overall the majority of people who are practicing it as a subject are following the right line. For the aberration, don't blame yoga or the whole community of yogis
An evil for these times destined to move through the world in handsome human guise.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
My hypothesis is that for people who are both trained and inclined to think in rigorously logical ways, it is particularly difficult to adapt to the Soviet system of doublethink.
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
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