William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

William Wordsworth
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.

William Wordsworth
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual All-in-all!

William Wordsworth
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

William Wordsworth
Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.

William Wordsworth
Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men.

William Wordsworth
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

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

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

William Wordsworth
In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,—
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

William Wordsworth
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

William Wordsworth
A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

William Wordsworth
The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

William Wordsworth
The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an angel's wing.

William Wordsworth
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of earth's bitter leaven
Effaced forever.

William Wordsworth
Thou has 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
Sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

William Wordsworth
The monumental pomp of age
Was with this goodly personage;
A stature undepressed in size,
Unbent, which rather seemed to rise
In open victory o'er the weight
Of seventy years, to loftier height.

William Wordsworth
Happier of happy though I be, like them
I cannot take possession of the sky,
Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there
One of a mighty multitude whose way
Is a perpetual harmony and dance
Magnificent.

William Wordsworth
And when the stream Which overflowed the soul was passed away, A consciousness remained that it had left Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory images and precious thoughts That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

William Wordsworth
As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main ocean they, this deed accursed An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed.

William Wordsworth
Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet.

William Wordsworth
We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud
And magnify thy name Almighty God!
But man is thy most awful instrument
In working out a pure intent.

William Wordsworth
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it moves at all.

William Wordsworth
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

William Wordsworth