In obscurity.
The palpable obscure. [ Milton ]
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown.
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie. [ Pope ]
I give the fight up; let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me,
I want to be forgotten even by God. [ Robert Browning ]
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot. [ Pope ]
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. [ Gray ]
Lend me thy clarion goodness! let me try
To sound the praise of merit ere it dies.
Such as I oft have chanced to espy,
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity. [ Shenstone ]
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity. [ Shenstone ]
Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity. [ Ovid ]
He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well. [ Ovid ]
How often we see the greatest genius buried in obscurity! [ Plautus ]
The swallowing gulf of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion. [ William Shakespeare ]
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity. [ Quintilian ]
People newly emerged from obscurity generally launch out into indiscriminate display. [ Jean Ingelow ]
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. [ Landor ]
How many languish in obscurity, who would become great if emulation and encouragement incited them to exertion! [ Fenelon ]
Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world. [ Chamfort ]
The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither their good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. [ Sallust ]
Obscurity in writing is commonly an argument of darkness in the mind. The greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness. [ Wilkins ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. [ Macaulay ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas. [ Macaulay ]
He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind and see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible. [ Goethe ]
He that would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked on the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. [ Gibbon ]
The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves. [ Shenstone ]
Biography, especially the biography of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records. [ Horace Mann ]
A prolific source of obscurity is ambiguous arrangement. A member of the Savage Club, so runs the story, was one day standing on the steps of the club house. A messenger stopped and inquired: Does a gentleman belong to your club with one eye named Walker?
I don't know,
was the answer, what was the name of his other eye?
[ Sir J. F. Stephen, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]
It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. [ Addison ]