William Wordsworth Quotes

She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

Lives there a man whose sole delights Are trivial pomp and city noise, Hardening a heart that loathes or slights What every natural heart enjoys?

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.

My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.

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

For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.

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

Feeling comes in aid
Of feeling, and diversity of strength
Attends us, if but once we have been strong.

Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky!

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

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration; — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasures; such, perhaps,
As have made no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

Love betters what is best