A Quote by Thomas Gray
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
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Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain; And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain
He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.
Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,
By winding myrtle round your ruin'd shed?
Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; - Oh, so dull - so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed - Still with his dulness was he cursed - Dull -beyond all conception - dull.
Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.
Some days my thoughts are just cocoons -- all cold, and dull, and blind, They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind; And other days they drift and shine -- such free and flying things! I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.
But animated nature sweeter still, to soothe and satisfy the human ear.
The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.
This is another day! Are its eyes blurred with maudlin grief for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust, death, death; I am alive!
Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
Set honor in one eye and death in th' other, and I will look on both indifferently. I love then name of honor more than I fear death.
But the idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it, straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward.
You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.
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