William Wordsworth Quotes

The weight of sadness was in wonder lost.

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.

A Briton even in love should be A subject, not a slave!

Poetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.

The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

Delivered from the galling yoke of time.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.

Nature's old felicities.

Faith is, necessary to explain anything, and to reconcile the foreknowledge of God with human evil.

I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.

Faith is a passionate intuition.

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration: - feelings, too, Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

In ourselves our safety must be sought. By our own right hand it must be wrought.

Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.

Earth helped him with the cry of blood.

Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

Books are yours, Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of gold And orient gems, which, for a day of need, The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs. These hoards of truth you can unlock at will.

Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold.

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

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect.

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.

...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.

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.

Free as a bird to settle where I will.

This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

The fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.

If the time should ever come when what is now called Science, thus famliarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to the aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.

Serene will be our days, and bright and happy will our nature be, when love is an unerring light, and joy its own security.

A power is passing from the earth.

Like an army defeated the snow hath retreated.

How many undervalue the power of simplicity ! But it is the real key to the heart.

That kill the bloom before its time, And blanch, without the owner's crime, The most resplendent hair.

There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.

Wisdom sits with children round her knees.

The vision and the faculty divine; Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.

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

The wind, a sightless laborer, whistles at his task.

To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Spade! Thou art a tool of honor in my hands. I press thee, through a yielding soil, with pride.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.

Let the moon shine on the in thy solitary walk; and let the misty mountain-winds be free to blow against thee.

Shalt show us how divine a thing A woman may be made.

I've watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! Indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! - not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!