Quotes from William Wordsworth

Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

Father!–to God himself we cannot give a holier name.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sight,To me did seemAppareled in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore—Turn wheresoe'er I may,By night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

I've watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! Indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! - not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!

But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,France standing on the top of golden hours,And human nature seeming born again.

Strongest mindsAre often those of whom the noisy worldHears least.

The Rainbow comes and goes,And lovely is the Rose.

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speakA lasting inspiration, sanctifiedBy reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,Others will love, and we will teach them how;Instruct them how the mind of man becomesA thousand times more beautiful than the earthOn which he dwells.

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit growsLike harmony in music; there is a darkInscrutable workmanship that reconcilesDiscordant elements, makes them cling togetherIn one society.

The youth, who daily farther from the eastMust travel, still is Nature's priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;At length the man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.

A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.

As if his whole vocationWere endless imitation.

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,God being with thee when we know it not.

Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew upFostered alike by beauty and by fear.

The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober coloring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;Another race hath been, and other palms are won.Thanks to the human heart by which we live,Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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.

Small service is true service while it lasts:Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one:The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

A fingering slave,One that would peep and botanizeUpon his mother's grave?

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room.

Nor less I deem that there are PowersWhich of themselves our minds impress;That we can feed this mind of oursIn a wise passiveness.

The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colors and their forms, were then to meAn appetite; a feeling and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm,By thought supplied, nor any interestUnborrowed from the eye.

His high endeavors are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright.

The grim shapeTowered up between me and the stars, and still,For so it seemed, with purpose of its ownAnd measured motion like a living thing,Strode after me.