William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

Pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.

William Wordsworth
Tis said, fantastic ocean doth enfold The likeness of whate'er on land is seen.

William Wordsworth
While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

William Wordsworth
That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!

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

William Wordsworth
The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.

William Wordsworth
The Poet, gentle creature as he is, Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times; His fits when he is neither sick nor well, Though no distress be near him but his own Unmanageable thoughts.

William Wordsworth
It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

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

William Wordsworth
Sweetest melodies
Are those that are by distance made more sweet.

William Wordsworth
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

William Wordsworth
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

William Wordsworth
Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,
Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh
That would lament her.

William Wordsworth
Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least.

William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth
Thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind.

William Wordsworth
Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.

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

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
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source,
The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

William Wordsworth