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Grey's poem is quite famous, as is the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and much has been written on it, but the the core meaning is quite simple. The more knowledge one has, the greater one's grief, because this knowledge includes the inevitability of death, and that all we are and do and achieve eventually turns to dust.
May 7, 2024 · In drawing these comparisons, Keats transposes something of England onto the Nile to understand it, but he does so with humility. At the volta, he proclaims: “’Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste / Of all beyond itself.” He speaks not of the Nile, whose waters bestow life only on things nearby and leave a barren waste of desert beyond.
Sep 5, 2022 · And this is the meaning of "virtue only makes our bliss below", that we must seek happiness in the pursuit of virtuous deeds. "Below" here is a theological reference to life on earth "below" heaven, the latter being a perfect state of grace where virtue and happiness are a given. Pope has perhaps chosen this shorthand to keep with his rhyming ...
Sep 30, 2020 · This is the meaning of "Donkeys live a long time". "None of you has ever seen a dead donkey," had a twofold meaning: in the first instance, it supports the original statement that donkeys are long-lived and in the second it implies that they are hardy and will survive and endure no matter what privations are inflicted on them.
Jul 10, 2024 · The edition by Burton Raffel (The Annotated Shakespeare, Yale University Press, 2005, page 11) merely says that the line is "intoned, with a gleeful malice" but lets the reader guess the meaning. The edition by G. K. Hunter (New Penguin Shakespeare (Penguin, 1967, page 141) has the following gloss for "do":
Jun 13, 2018 · Emerson's pictoral meaning. Hence this hobgoblin Emerson speaks of seems to be the addiction of proud minds to spend their hours pontificating underground on how they can make their great theories more logically consistent while failing to address the practical realities in daylight.
Aug 14, 2020 · James Baldwin's open letter to Angela Davis contains the following sentence (emphasis added):. The will of the people, in America, has always been at the mercy of an ignorance not merely phenomenal, but sacred, and sacredly cultivated: the better to be used by a carnivorous economy which democratically slaughters and victimizes whites and blacks alike.
Winston's work involves falsifying history, yes, but there's no physical proof that's what he's doing. On paper, his job is not to change the record of historical facts or to falsify evidence of the past: instead, it's to correct 'mistakes' in past news reports etc. Officially, he's employed by the Ministry of Truth (truth, not falsification) to amend the many unaccountable errors in past ...
Such have but a shadow’s bliss. I have no problems in understanding the text before and after this but I can't seem to 'get' the meaning of this particular extract. I think that these lines roughly translate to : The following has been tested seven times: People who consider their judgement seven times Are never wrong (?).
Jun 26, 2022 · Nonetheless to the Victorian mind, especially among the educated classes, the root cause of medieval ignorance and superstition was the Catholic Church. The largely Protestant upper class, newly enthused with representative government, convinced itself that hierarchies (at least Catholic ones where they weren't at the top) bred servility, squalor, and ignorance.
