Quotes About Reflection

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills...

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

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I had melancholy thoughts... a strangeness in my mind, A feeling that I was not for that hour, Nor for that place.

And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.

Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things— We murder to dissect.

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

And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much, The self-sufficing power of solitude.

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.

She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene, The memory of what has been, And never more will be.

From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.

Therefore, let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty-mountain winds be free to blow against thee.

I listen'd, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

A deep distress hath humanised my soul.

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!

I heard a thousand blended notes While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.

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…

The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast.

One moment now may give us more Than fifty years of reason; Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season.

Our meddlesome intellect misshapen the beauteous form of things.

I cannot paint what then I was.

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.

This son of his old age was yet more dear— Less from instinctive tenderness, the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all— 145 Than that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail.

could have laugh'd myself to scorn, to find   In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.