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William Wordsworth Quotes
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William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads .

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. April 1770 – 23. April 1850  •  Other names Уильям Вордсворт, ویلیام وردزورث
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William Wordsworth: 306 quotes36 likes

William Wordsworth Quotes

“Maidens withering on the stalk.”

William Wordsworth

Personal Talk, Stanza 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 13.
Laodamia (1814)

“And beauty, for confiding youth,
Those shocks of passion can prepare
That kill the bloom before its time;
And blanch, without the owner's crime,
The most resplendent hair.”

William Wordsworth

Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, st. 6 (1817).

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

“The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!”

William Wordsworth

The Cock is crowing.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.”

William Wordsworth

Hart-leap Well, part ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“As high as we have mounted in delight,
In our dejection do we sink as low.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 4.
Resolution and Independence (1807)

“Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd;
He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.”

William Wordsworth

Another couplet from Edward Young: this time Night Thoughts, Night II, line 160.
Misattributed

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

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Peter Bell, Part I, stanza 3.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 1. <br class="br"> Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

“Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!”

William Wordsworth

To Sleep (A Flock of Sheep), l. 13 (1806).

“Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,
Brought from a pensive though a happy place.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 16.
Laodamia (1814)

“But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.”

William Wordsworth

Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G.H.B., st. 7 (1824).

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

William Wordsworth

Stanza 14.
Resolution and Independence (1807)

“May no rude hand deface it,
And its forlorn Hic jacet!”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle, st. 7 (1800).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
Or reap an acre of his neighbor's corn.”

William Wordsworth

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

“And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Lucy Gray, or Solitude, st. 16 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“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

The White Doe of Rylstone, canto iii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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)

“What is a Poet?…He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.”

William Wordsworth

Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines written in Early Spring.

“Meek Walton's heavenly memory.”

William Wordsworth

Part III, No. 5 – Walton's Book of Lives.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

“And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 3. <br class="br"> She Was a Phantom of Delight http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww259.html (1804)

“Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 1. <br class="br"> Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

“That inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 4. <br class="br"> I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804)

“Oh, be wise, Thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.”

William Wordsworth

Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
Lines (1795)

“"What is good for a bootless bene?"
With these dark words begins my tale;
And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring
When prayer is of no avail?”

William Wordsworth

Force of Prayer.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs—in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“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

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. ? (1799).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 18.
Laodamia (1814)

“For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

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