William Wordsworth Quotes

“Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”

Source: The Excursion 1814

“The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”

“Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
That has been, and may be again.”

Stanza 2.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Context: These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
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. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
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 The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The earth was all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.”

“Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.”

Source: The Prelude

“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.”

The Tables Turned, st. 4 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

William Wordsworth Quotes about love

“What we have loved
Others will love
And we will teach them how.”

“He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,—
The past unsighed for, and the future sure.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 17.
Laodamia (1814)

“O be wiser, thou !
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.”

“Love betters what is best”

Lines (1795)
Context: If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.

“What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how; instruct them how the mind of man becomes a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells…”

“Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.”

Source: Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth Quotes about heart

“I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”

Scorn Not the Sonnet, l. 1 (1827).

William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper, st. 4.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“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!”

William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much with Us

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 1 (1806).

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

“The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.”

Source: Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

“Then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

Source: Great Narrative Poems Of The Romantic Age

“From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.”

William Wordsworth: Trending quotes

“Free as a bird to settle where I will.”

Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XL
Context: From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me—farthest from earthly port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”

Bk. I, l. 1.
The Prelude (1799-1805)
Context: Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.”

Bk. XI, l. 108.
Source: The Prelude (1799-1805)

William Wordsworth Quotes

“A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”

Bk. IV, l. 354.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

“The feather, whence the pen
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,
Dropped from an Angel's wing.”

“On a fair prospect some have looked,
And felt, as I have heard them say,
As if the moving time had been
A thing as steadfast as the scene
On which they gazed themselves away.”

Part III, No. 5 - Walton's Book of Lives. Compare: "The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing / Made of a quill from an angel's wing", Henry Constable, Sonnet; "Whose noble praise / Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing", Dorothy Berry, Sonnet.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Part I, stanza 16.
Peter Bell (1798)

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

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

Intimations of Immortality Stanza 11.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 28.
Laodamia (1814)

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

“For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.”

Actually Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Driftwood (1857)
Misattributed

William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Another morn
Risen on mid-noon.”

“There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead.”

Bk. VI, l. 197.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

“The light that never was, on sea or land.”

Bk. XI, l. 393.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

“Yet was Rob Roy as wise as brave;
Forgive me if the phrase be strong;—
A Poet worthy of Rob Roy
Must scorn a timid song.”

Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812).

“The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.”

Rob Roy's Grave, st. 3.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“A living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.”

Stanza 3.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Context: And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills;

“Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.”

Yew-Trees, l. 9 (1803).
Context: Of vast circumference and gloom profound,
This solitary Tree! A living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.

“Now wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.”

The River Duddon, sonnet 34 - Afterthought, l. 13 (1820).

“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Context: If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; And that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.

Preface.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“Rest and be thankful.”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”

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

Personal Talk, sonnet 3 (1806).

“What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.”

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

Variant: Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be...
Source: Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

“The eye—it cannot choose but see;
we cannot bid the ear be still;
our bodies feel, where'er they be,
against or with our will.”

“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky”

Expostulation and Reply, st. 5 (1798).
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802)
The last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.
Context: 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.

“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.”

Part II, No. 28 - Reflections.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

“Be mild, and cleave to gentle things,
thy glory and thy happiness be there.”

Stanza 3.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Context: That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; 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;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

“Delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood.”

“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 wreathèd horn.”

William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much with Us

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 9 (1806).

“The mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells.”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

“Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

Stanza 1. <br class="br"> I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804) <br class="br">Source: I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud

“The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.”

“And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.”

“poetry is the breath and finer spirit of knowledge”

Source: Selected Poetry

“Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”

Source: Lyrical Ballads

“… and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.”

“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”

Source: Lyrical Ballads

“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

The Tables Turned, st. 6 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”

“Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things;
—We murder to dissect.”

We Are Seven, st. 1 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.”

Source: Lyrical Ballads

“Faith is a passionate intuition.”

Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XLI.
Context: And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong)
That I, at last, a resting-place had found:
'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long,
Roaming the illimitable waters round;
Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned.
And end my days upon the peaceful flood—
To break my dream the vessel reached its bound;
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.

“Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.”

Source: Garbled version of c. l 1295 of Despondency Corrected (Vol. 5 of W's Poetical Works on Gurenberg)

“A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.”

This is only a slightly misquoted version of "Pictures deface walls oftener than they decorate them", written by Frank Lloyd Wright in the magazine Architectural Record in March 1908.
Misattributed

“O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!”

“We take no note of time but from its loss.”

Sonnet. In the Pass of Killicranky, l. 11 (1803).
Variant: O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!

“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.”

Actually Night I, lines 55-56 of Young's Night Thoughts.
Misattributed