ignorance is bliss

It sometimes is better not to know one’s fate, or the outcome. Although the idea was stated by the Greek playwright Sophocles (c. 409 B.C.) and quoted by Erasmus in the early sixteenth century, the pre- cise wording of the cliché comes from the closing lines of Thomas Gray’s poem, “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1742): “Where igno- rance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” Both it and blissful ignorance became clichés in the nineteenth century, but the latter has died out.