William Wordsworth Quotes

411 Sourced Quotes

The Mind of Man—
My haunt, and the main region of my song.

William Wordsworth
I'll teach my boy the sweetest things; I'll teach him how the owlet sings.

William Wordsworth
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

William Wordsworth
In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

William Wordsworth
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

William Wordsworth
Never forget what I believe was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

William Wordsworth
Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.

William Wordsworth
Where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

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

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
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
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny.

William Wordsworth
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover.

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

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

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
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

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

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

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

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

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
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