Wordsworth's Quotes

#1. We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy. - Author: Thom Gunn

#2. It is usually in better taste to praise an isolated action or a production of genius, than a man's character as a whole. - Author: Elizabeth Wordsworth

#3. Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force: But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power? - Author: Matthew Arnold

#4. The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love. - Author: William Wordsworth

#5. I make no apology for writing in nature's age-old and unaging language, of whose images we build our paradises, Broceliande and Brindavan, the Forest of Arden, Xanadu, Shelley's Skies, or even Wordsworth's Grasemere, which can be found on no map. - Author: Kathleen Raine

#6. The clouds that gather round the setting sun, Do take a sober colouring from an eye, That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality. - Author: William Wordsworth

#7. A babe, by intercourse of touch I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart. - Author: William Wordsworth

#8. That kill the bloom before its time, And blanch, without the owner's crime, The most resplendent hair. - Author: William Wordsworth

#9. For mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favourite be feeble woman's breast. - Author: William Wordsworth

#10. One solace yet remains for us who came Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact. - Author: William Wordsworth

#11. Wordsworth also said that the best part of a person's life is "his little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love." I - Author: Amy Poehler

#12. Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love. - Author: William Wordsworth

#13. Wordsworth's particular grace, his charisma, as theologians say, has been granted in equal measure to so very few men since time was
to Plato and who else?
The crucial thing is never what we do, but always what we do right after that. What matters is always the next step! - Author: Robert Musil

#14. The light that never was, on sea or land; The consecration, and the Poet's dream. - Author: William Wordsworth

#15. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#16. And suddenly all your troubles melt away, all your worries are gone, and it is for no reason other than the look in your partner's eyes. Yes, sometimes life and love really is that simple. - Author: William Wordsworth

#17. In this they have the support of Blake, a man so sensitive to any trace of "Natural Religion" that he is said to have blamed some verses of Wordsworth's for a bowel complaint which almost killed him. - Author: Geoffrey H. Hartman

#18. We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works. - Author: Andrew Coyle Bradley

#19. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#20. Nature's old felicities. - Author: William Wordsworth

#21. Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know. - Author: William Wordsworth

#22. Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow! - Author: William Wordsworth

#23. The ghosts of Rilke and Wordsworth
along with the 300+ MFA programs, which now seem to employ all Living Poets
have misled the American public egregiously into thinking that poets are morally pure and/or useless. - Author: Katy Lederer

#24. How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! - Author: William Wordsworth

#25. We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. - Author: William Wordsworth

#26. A famous man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer's joy. - Author: William Wordsworth

#27. To be a Prodigal's favourite,-then, worse truth, A Miser's pensioner,-behold our lot! - Author: William Wordsworth

#28. To Wordsworth nature was the nurse; to us, it's the patient. - Author: Robert Hillman

#29. 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:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come - Author: William Wordsworth

#30. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#31. When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country
am I to be blamed? - Author: William Wordsworth

#32. No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees. - Author: William Wordsworth

#33. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#34. Bright flower! whose home is everywhere Bold in maternal nature's care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity, Given to no other flower I see The forest through. - Author: William Wordsworth

#35. The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an angel's wing. - Author: William Wordsworth

#36. One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave. - Author: William Wordsworth

#37. Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth. - Author: William Wordsworth

#38. A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow rose was to him.
And it was nothing more - Author: William Wordsworth

#39. The ocean is a mighty harmonist. - Author: William Wordsworth

#40. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#41. The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. - Author: William Wordsworth

#42. The first cuckoo's melancholy cry. - Author: William Wordsworth

#43. 'T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind. - Author: William Wordsworth

#44. Books! tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it. - Author: William Wordsworth

#45. Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee,-air, earth, and skies! There 's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind. - Author: William Wordsworth

#46. Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells. - Author: William Wordsworth

#47. That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone! - Author: William Wordsworth

#48. 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. - Author: William Wordsworth

#49. She gave him books of poetry: Wordsworth, Whitman, all the W's. When she'd ask him how he liked them, he would say, "Fine. I'm on page ... " and then he would tell her what page he was on and how many pages he'd accomplished that day. - Author: Lorrie Moore

#50. Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath. - Author: William Wordsworth

#51. A deep distress hath humanised my soul. - Author: William Wordsworth

#52. And through the heat of conflict keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. - Author: William Wordsworth

#53. The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on a dim and perilous way! - Author: William Wordsworth

#54. Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Author: William Wordsworth

#55. The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o'er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height. - Author: William Wordsworth

#56. Imagination is the means of deep insight and sympathy, the power to conceive and express images removed from normal objective reality. - Author: William Wordsworth

#57. The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose. - Author: William Wordsworth

#58. Long as there's a sun that sets, Primroses will have their glory; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story: There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine. - Author: William Wordsworth

#59. Tis said, fantastic ocean doth enfold The likeness of whate'er on land is seen. - Author: William Wordsworth

#60. Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold. - Author: William Wordsworth

#61. I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, wherever nature led. - Author: William Wordsworth

#62. The rainbow comes and goes. Enjoy it while it lasts. Don't be surprised by its departure, and rejoice when it returns. - Author: Anderson Cooper

#63. An injudicious and malignant enemy often serves the cause he means to injure; but a feeble friend never attains that end. - Author: Dorothy Wordsworth

#64. The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun. - Author: William Wordsworth

#65. One in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition. - Author: William Wordsworth

#66. Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives. - Author: William Wordsworth

#67. Where are your books? - that light bequeathed
To beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind. - Author: William Wordsworth

#68. Ere we had reach'd the wish'd-for place, night fell: We were too late at least by one dark hour, - Author: William Wordsworth

#69. Wisdom married to immortal verse. - Author: William Wordsworth

#70. And mighty poets in their misery dead. - Author: William Wordsworth

#71. Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. - Author: Henry David Thoreau

#72. My brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. - Author: William Wordsworth

#73. The common growth of Mother Earth Suffices me,-her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears. - Author: William Wordsworth

#74. The harvest of a quiet eye, That broods and sleeps on his own heart. - Author: William Wordsworth

#75. Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy ... - Author: William Wordsworth

#76. Of friends, however humble, scorn not one. - Author: William Wordsworth

#77. Who fancied what a pretty sight This Rock would be if edged around With living Snowdrops? circlet bright! How glorious to this Orchard ground! Who loved the little Rock, and set - Author: William Wordsworth

#78. Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy. - Author: George Gordon Byron

#79. The course of English Literature would have been decidedly different had Mr. Wordsworth owned a power mower, she thought. - Author: Harper Lee

#80. O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live. - Author: William Wordsworth

#81. One interior life in which all beings live with God, themselves are God, existing in the mighty whole, indistinguishable as the cloudless east is from the cloudless west, when all the hemisphere is one cerulean blue. - Author: William Wordsworth

#82. We murder to dissect. - Author: William Wordsworth

#83. I think one of the dullest things in the world is a letter filled with apologies for not writing sooner. - Author: Dorothy Wordsworth

#84. I'm not talking about a "show me other walls of this thing" button, I mean a "stumble" button for wallbase. - Author: William Wordsworth

#85. The education of circumstances is superior to that of tuition. - Author: William Wordsworth

#86. Upon the highest ridge of that round hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the trees show in the light like the columns of a ruin. - Author: Dorothy Wordsworth

#87. The sightless Milton, with his hair Around his placid temples curled; And Shakespeare at his side,-a freight, If clay could think and mind were weight, For him who bore the world! - Author: William Wordsworth

#88. Careless of books, yet having felt the power
Of Nature, by the gentle agency
Of natural objects, led me on to feel
For passions that were not my own, and think
(At random and imperfectly indeed)
On man, the heart of man, and human life. - Author: William Wordsworth

#89. O dearer far than light and life are dear. - Author: William Wordsworth

#90. Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet. - Author: William Wordsworth

#91. And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food. - Author: William Wordsworth

#92. Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall. - Author: William Wordsworth

#93. A great poet ought to a certain degree to rectify men's feelings ... to render their feelings more sane, pure and permanent, in short, more consonant to Nature. - Author: William Wordsworth

#94. One impulse from a vernal wood - Author: William Wordsworth

#95. The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. - Author: William Wordsworth

#96. The child is father of the man - Author: William Wordsworth

#97. And I am happy when I sing. - Author: William Wordsworth

#98. Go to the poets, they will speak to thee
More perfectly of purer creatures
- Author: William Wordsworth

#99. My gentle Reader, I perceive / How patiently you've waited, / And now I fear that you expect / Some tale will be related. / O Reader! had you in your mind / Such stores as silent thought can bring, / O gentle Reader! you would find / A tale in every thing. - Author: William Wordsworth

#100. But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave. - Author: William Wordsworth