William Wordsworth: Trending quotes

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William Wordsworth: 612 quotes36 likes

“In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is.”

William Wordsworth

Nuns Fret Not, l. 8 (1806).

“In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines Written in Early Spring, st. 1 (1798).

“Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters.”

William Wordsworth

London, 1802, l. 1 (1807).

“She hath smiles to earth unknown—
Smiles that with motion of their own
Do spread, and sink, and rise.”

William Wordsworth

Cancelled lines originally in the second stanza of Louisa (1805).

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

William Wordsworth

Stepping Westward, st. 2.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“From Stirling Castle we had seen
The mazy Forth unravelled;
Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay,
And with the Tweed had travelled;
And when we came to Clovenford,
Then said "my winsome marrow,"
"Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside,
And see the braes of Yarrow."”

William Wordsworth

Yarrow Unvisited, st. 1.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give,
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live!”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 8. <br class="br"> Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

“We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.”

William Wordsworth

To the Daisy.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.”

William Wordsworth

The Borderers Act iv. Sc. 2.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

William Wordsworth

Not Love, not War.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.

“The Eagle, he was lord above,
And Rob was lord below.”

William Wordsworth

Rob Roy's Grave, st. 14.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“Is there not
An art, a music, and a stream of words
That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?”

William Wordsworth The Recluse

The Recluse, l. 401 (1805).

“Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel
To self-reproach.”

William Wordsworth

The Old Cumberland Beggar.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Ocean is a mighty harmonist.”

William Wordsworth

On the Power of Sound, st. 12 (1828).

“The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

“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 book The Prelude

Bk. III, l. 60.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

“Something between a hindrance and a help.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Michael. A Pastoral Poem, l. 189 (1800).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!”

William Wordsworth

Thoughts suggested on the Banks of the Nith.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.”

William Wordsworth

This was not Wordsworth's viewpoint at all. The words are in fact those of Bertrand Russell in his Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 157.
Misattributed

“Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. I, l. 301.
The Prelude (1799-1805)