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William Wordsworth: 612 quotes36 likes

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

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.

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

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

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

“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…”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads

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

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads

“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.”

William Wordsworth

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

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

William Wordsworth

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.

“Faith is a passionate intuition.”

William Wordsworth

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

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

William Wordsworth

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

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

William Wordsworth

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

William Wordsworth

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!

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

William Wordsworth

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

“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

Stanza 5. <br class="br"> Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

“Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound.”