Top 480 Quotes & Sayings by William Wordsworth - Page 4

Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

And through the heat of conflict keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.

Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet.

In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat And birds and flowers once more to greet. . . .

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.

The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives.

Of friends, however humble, scorn not one.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.

For youthful faults ripe virtues shall atone.

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.

Imagination, which in truth Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason, in her most exalted mood.

Knowledge and increase of enduring joy From the great Nature that exists in works Of mighty Poets.

A babe, by intercourse of touch I held mute dialogues with my Mother's heart.

The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benedictions.

Wild is the music of autumnal winds Amongst the faded woods.

Or shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.

O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.

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.

Mark the babe not long accustomed to this breathing world; One that hath barely learned to shape a smile, though yet irrational of soul, to grasp with tiny finger - to let fall a tear; And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves, To stretch his limbs, becoming, as might seem. The outward functions of intelligent man.

Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things We murder to dissect

Not in Utopia, -- subterranean fields, --Or some secreted island, Heaven knows whereBut in the very world, which is the worldOf all of us, -- the place where in the endWe find our happiness, or not at all

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.

I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.

Sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

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

Plain living and high thinking are no more. The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.

For by superior energies; more strict affiance in each other; faith more firm in their unhallowed principles, the bad have fairly earned a victory over the weak, the vacillating, inconsistent good.

I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy, Vexing its own creation.

Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song.

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

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

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.

Action is transitory, a step, a blow, The motion of a muscle, this way or that, 'Tis done--And in the after-vacancy, We wonder at ourselves, like men betrayed.

O dearer far than light and life are dear.

Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,Frozen by distance.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

Death is the quiet haven of us all.

Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.

Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity.

Departing summer hath assumed An aspect tenderly illumed, The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade Unfaded, yet prepared to fade, A timely carolling.

And often, glad no more, We wear a face of joy because We have been glad of yore.

The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society.

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.

Everything is tedious when one does not read with the feeling of the Author.

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

A great poet ought to a certain degree to rectify men's feelings... to render their feelings more sane, pure and permanent, in short, more consonant to Nature.

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.

Babylon, Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh That would lament her.

Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth.

For mightier far Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway Of magic potent over sun and star, Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favourite be feeble woman's breast.

Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither.

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.

Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, one of a mighty multitude whose way and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.

What are fears but voices airy? Whispering harm where harm is not. And deluding the unwary Till the fatal bolt is shot!

A deep distress has humanised my soul.

A genial hearth, a hospitable board, and a refined rusticity.