William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

There is a luxury in self-dispraise;
And inward self-disparagement affords
To meditative spleen a grateful feast.

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

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
With gentle hand
Touch—for there is a spirit in the woods.

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

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

William Wordsworth
I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.

William Wordsworth
We were brothers all
In honour, as in one community,
Scholars and gentlemen.

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

William Wordsworth
And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong)
That I, at last, a resting-place had found:
'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long,
Roaming the illimitable waters round;
Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned.
And end my days upon the peaceful flood—
To break my dream the vessel reached its bound;
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.

William Wordsworth
The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of Man, like flowers.

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
To thee
Science appears but what in truth she is,
Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity.

William Wordsworth
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.

William Wordsworth
Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound.

William Wordsworth
Often have I sighed to measure
By myself a lonely pleasure,—
Sighed to think I read a book,
Only read, perhaps, by me.

William Wordsworth
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

William Wordsworth
Society became my glittering bride, And airy hopes my children.

William Wordsworth
Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

William Wordsworth
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

William Wordsworth
From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me—farthest from earthly port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.

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
O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

William Wordsworth
There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead.

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

William Wordsworth
As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!

William Wordsworth
But Thy most dreaded instrument,
In working out a pure intent,
Is man—arrayed for mutual slaughter,
—Yea, Carnage is thy daughter!

William Wordsworth