William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.

William Wordsworth
Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams.

William Wordsworth
Yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me—even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!

William Wordsworth
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident tomorrows.

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
Mark the babe not long accustomed to this breathing world; One that hath barely learned to shape a smile, though yet irrational of soul, to grasp with tiny finger - to let fall a tear; And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves, To stretch his limbs, becoming, as might seem. The outward functions of intelligent man.

William Wordsworth
Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel
To self-reproach.

William Wordsworth
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.

William Wordsworth
Be mild, and cleave to gentle things, thy glory and thy happiness be there.

William Wordsworth
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.

William Wordsworth
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!—
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

William Wordsworth
What is pride? A whizzing rocket
That would emulate a star.

William Wordsworth
All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate.

William Wordsworth
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.

William Wordsworth
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.

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

William Wordsworth
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.

William Wordsworth
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

William Wordsworth
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!

William Wordsworth
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!

William Wordsworth
Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind
I wished to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But thee, long buried in the silent tomb.

William Wordsworth
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free.

William Wordsworth
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
That has been, and may be again.

William Wordsworth
One in whom persuasion and belief Had ripened into faith, and faith become A passionate intuition.

William Wordsworth
Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

William Wordsworth
I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.

William Wordsworth
Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take that subtle power, the never-halting time.

William Wordsworth
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.

William Wordsworth