William Wordsworth quotes:

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  • That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

  • Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  • That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

  • Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.

  • When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

  • A famous man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer's joy.

  • The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.

  • Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

  • Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

  • For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.

  • Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.

  • How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

  • The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

  • Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

  • With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

  • To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

  • Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

  • The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration.

  • The ocean is a mighty harmonist.

  • What are fears but voices airy? Whispering harm where harm is not. And deluding the unwary Till the fatal bolt is shot!

  • Society became my glittering bride, And airy hopes my children.

  • The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours.

  • As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main ocean they, this deed accursed An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed.

  • Is then no nook of English ground secureFrom rash assault?"

  • But who would force the soul tilts with a straw Against a champion cased in adamant

  • Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar;

  • There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon.

  • The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benedictions.

  • The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives.

  • Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

  • And now I see with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine. A being breathing thoughtful breaths, A traveler between life and death.

  • The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!

  • A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

  • The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

  • It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.

  • Before us lay a painful road, And guidance have I sought in duteous love From Wisdom's heavenly Father. Hence hath flowed Patience, with trust that, whatsoe'er the way Each takes in this high matter, all may move Cheered with the prospect of a brighter day.

  • A soul so pitiably forlorn, If such do on this earth abide, May season apathy with scorn, May turn indifference to pride; And still be not unblest- compared With him who grovels, self-debarred From all that lies within the scope Of holy faith and christian hope; Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.

  • This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

  • We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

  • The light that never was, on sea or land; The consecration, and the Poet's dream.

  • For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude

  • Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science

  • In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.

  • O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice?

  • The first cuckoo's melancholy cry.

  • Then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.

  • I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd A host of golden daffodils Beside the lake beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  • one daffodil is worth a thousand pleasures, then one is too few.

  • Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling.

  • We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

  • I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

  • Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray.

  • Oh for a single hour of that Dundee Who on that day the word of onset gave!

  • Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; / Look up a second time, and, one by one, / You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, / And wonder how they could elude the sight!

  • I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

  • A light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove.

  • Whether we be young or old,Our destiny, our being's heart and home,Is with infinitude, and only there;With hope it is, hope that can never die,Effort and expectation, and desire,And something evermore about to be.

  • Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--But how could I forget thee?

  • Pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.

  • Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.

  • Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  • Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.

  • Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

  • Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known And that imperial palace whence he came.

  • Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat! And birds and flowers once more to greet, My last year's friends together.

  • When his veering gait And every motion of his starry train Seem governed by a strain Of music, audible to him alone.

  • Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

  • Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source, The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

  • Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.

  • The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

  • Nor will I then thy modest grace forget, Chaste Snow-drop, venturous harbinger of Spring, And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

  • Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay, And at my casement sing, Though it should prove a farewell lay And this our parting spring. * * * * * Then, little Bird, this boon confer, Come, and my requiem sing, Nor fail to be the harbinger Of everlasting spring.

  • But He is risen, a later star of dawn.

  • Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells.

  • We live by admiration, hope and love.

  • We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love; And, even as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend.

  • Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

  • One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

  • "One impulse from a vernal wood

  • Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

  • A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky - I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Sleepless...

  • A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.

  • Faith is a passionate intuition.

  • A lawyer art thou? Draw not nigh! Go, carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of that sallow face.

  • Or shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.

  • I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

  • Type of the wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home.

  • Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?

  • Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

  • But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.

  • Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.

  • A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

  • There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.

  • True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart.

  • [Mathematics] is an independent world created out of pure intelligence.

  • Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things We murder to dissect

  • Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.

  • Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?

  • Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised

  • In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.

  • Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.

  • The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.

  • Where the statue stood Of Newton, with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.

  • A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident tomorrows.

  • Great God! I'd rather be a Pagan....

  • Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, Let them live upon their praises.

  • Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great is passed away.

  • Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness

  • Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

  • Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

  • Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, Brought from a pensive though a happy place.

  • Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.

  • We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted.

  • Bright was the summer's noon when quickening steps Followed each other till a dreary moor Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge, I overlooked the bed of Windermere, Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.

  • A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.

  • I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy, Vexing its own creation.

  • Now when the primrose makes a splendid show, And lilies face the March-winds in full blow, And humbler growths as moved with one desire Put on, to welcome spring, their best attire, Poor Robin is yet flowerless; but how gay With his red stalks upon this sunny day!

  • What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars.

  • Whether we be young or old,Our destiny, our being's heart and home,Is with infinitude, and only there;With hope it is, hope that can never die,Effort and expectation, and desire,And something evermore about to be

  • She dwelt among the untrodden waysBeside the springs of Dove,A Maid whom there were none to praiseAnd very few to love:A violet by a mossy stoneHalf hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only oneIs shining in the sky.She lived unknown, and few could knowWhen Lucy ceased to be;But she is in her grave, and, oh,The difference to me!

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