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The paths of glory lead but to the grave.   Gray, Thomas

Source: THOMAS GRAY, Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, line 36, The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray, ed. H. W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson, p. 38 . Originally published in 1751.Nobody knew that [Major General James] Wolfe, reciting Grays Elegy in 1759 as he rowed up the St. Lawrence [to Quebec] the night before his death, said that he would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French tomorrow, until in 1815, in Vol. VII of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, appeared a biography of its secretary, John Robison, LL. D., professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who as a young man had been a midshipman in Wolfes flotilla.Carroll A. Wilson, Familiar Small College Quotations, II: Mark Hopkins and the Log, The Colophon, spring 1938, p. 204. · This quote is about glory · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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