William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident tomorrows.

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

William Wordsworth
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilights too her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.

William Wordsworth
The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.

William Wordsworth
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight.

William Wordsworth
Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

William Wordsworth
And we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

William Wordsworth
Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,
Loose types of things through all degrees.

William Wordsworth
Full twenty times was Peter feared,
For once that Peter was respected.

William Wordsworth
Man now presides
In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;
Science advances with gigantic strides;
But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?

William Wordsworth
Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?
Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day,
Festively she puts forth in trim array.

William Wordsworth
The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!

William Wordsworth
Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

William Wordsworth
For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was.

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

William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

William Wordsworth
A simple child, dear brother Jim,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

William Wordsworth