The collection / 83 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

83 results · Page 4 of 4Play this collection ▷

01c. 1743 AD

How many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

02c. 1743 AD

Ambition tempts to rise, Then whirls the wretch from high To bitter Scorn a sacrifice And grinning Infamy.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

03c. 1743 AD

When first thy sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, designed, To thee he gave the heavenly birth, And bade thee form her infant mind. Stern rugged nurse, thy rigid lore With patience many a year she bore; What sorrow was thou bad’st her know, And, from her own, she learned to melt at other’s woe.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

04c. 1743 AD

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour; The path of glory leads but to the grave.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

05c. 1743 AD

Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

06c. 1743 AD

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

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

07c. 1743 AD

As to posterity I may ask what has it ever done to oblige me?

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

08c. 1743 AD

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

09c. 1743 AD

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.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

10c. 1743 AD

Youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗

11c. 1743 AD

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Thomas Gray / quote

↗