William Wordsworth quotes

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet, renowned for his celebration of nature and the human spirit. His works, including "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" and the autobiographical "The Prelude," had a profound influence on English literature. He became Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and helped shape the Romantic movement. Here are 398 of his quotes:

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth

The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.

William Wordsworth

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 in solitude.

William Wordsworth

How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

William Wordsworth

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.

William Wordsworth

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.

William Wordsworth

A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

William Wordsworth

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.

William Wordsworth

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.

William Wordsworth

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

William Wordsworth

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

William Wordsworth

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

William Wordsworth

Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

William Wordsworth

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

William Wordsworth

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 wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth

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

We must be free or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.

William Wordsworth

Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray.

William Wordsworth

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

William Wordsworth

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

Meek Walton's heavenly memory.

William Wordsworth