William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

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

William Wordsworth
There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.

William Wordsworth
As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

William Wordsworth
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast 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.

William Wordsworth
To the solid ground
Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.

William Wordsworth
Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.

William Wordsworth
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.

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

William Wordsworth
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction.

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

William Wordsworth
As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay.

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

William Wordsworth
The mysteries that cups of flowers infold
And all the gorgeous sights which fairies do behold.

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

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,
Children of Summer!

William Wordsworth
Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth.

William Wordsworth
I look for ghosts; but none will force Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Between the living and the dead.

William Wordsworth
Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.

William Wordsworth
In the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth
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.

William Wordsworth
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?

William Wordsworth
High on her speculative tower Stood Science waiting for the hour When Sol was destined to endure That darkening of his radiant face Which Superstition strove to chase, Erewhile, with rites impure.

William Wordsworth
We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this.

William Wordsworth
Primroses, the Spring may love them; Summer knows but little of them.

William Wordsworth
The softest breeze to fairest flowers gives birth: Think not that Prudence dwells in dark abodes, She scans the future with the eye of gods.

William Wordsworth
Scattered herds, that in the meadow graze, Some amid lingering shade, some touched by the sun's rays.

William Wordsworth
But who is innocent? By grace divine, Not otherwise,O Nature! we are thine.

William Wordsworth
If thou art beautiful, and youth and thought endue thee with all truth-be strong;--be worthy of the grace of God.

William Wordsworth
We have within ourselves Enough to fill the present day with joy, And overspread the future years with hope.

William Wordsworth