William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth
Rapine, avarice, expense
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

William Wordsworth
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold.

William Wordsworth
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!

William Wordsworth
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.

William Wordsworth
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth
Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere With mazy boundaries, as the astronomer With orb and cycle girds the starry throng.

William Wordsworth
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

William Wordsworth
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?

William Wordsworth
A youth to whom was given
So much of earth—so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.

William Wordsworth
Alas! how little can a moment show
Of an eye where feeling plays
In ten thousand dewy rays:
A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!

William Wordsworth
And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude.

William Wordsworth
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules,
Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought
More for mankind at this unhappy day
Then all the pride of intellect and thought?

William Wordsworth
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you 'll grow double!
Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks!
Why all this toil and trouble?

William Wordsworth
O Blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

William Wordsworth
Hail to thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding spirit here today,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

William Wordsworth
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 wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!

William Wordsworth
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

William Wordsworth
Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star; Up and down the heavens they go. Like a sage astronomer.

William Wordsworth
Is it some party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed—
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
But as you by their faces see
All silent, and all damned?

William Wordsworth
The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink I heard a voice it said Drink, pretty creature, drink'

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
Every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.

William Wordsworth
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

William Wordsworth