Top 380 Alfred Tennyson Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Ah, Christ, that it were possible, For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.”

— Alfred Tennyson

252. “And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.”

— Alfred Tennyson

253. “Any man that walks the mead In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find, According as his humors lead, A meaning suited to his mind.”

— Alfred Tennyson

254. “Here at the quiet limit of the world.”

— Alfred Tennyson

255. “The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.”

— Alfred Tennyson

256. “Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths; Love laps his wings on either side the heart Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts, So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.”

— Alfred Tennyson

257. “It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.”

— Alfred Tennyson

258. “So dear a life your arms enfold, Whose crying is a cry for gold.”

— Alfred Tennyson

259. “As she fled fast through sun and shade The happy winds upon her play’d, Blowing the ringlet from the braid.”

— Alfred Tennyson

260. “The parting of a husband and wife is like the cleaving of a heart; one half will flutter here, one there.”

— Alfred Tennyson

261. “Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.”

— Alfred Tennyson

262. “And out of darkness came the hands that reach through nature, moulding men.”

— Alfred Tennyson

263. “As love, if love be perfect, casts out fear, so hate, if hate be perfect, casts out fear.”

— Alfred Tennyson

264. “Either sex alone is half itself.”

— Alfred Tennyson

265. “The song that nerves a nation’s heart is in itself a deed.”

— Alfred Tennyson

266. “Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind.”

— Alfred Tennyson

267. “Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts; Or all the same as if he had not been?”

— Alfred Tennyson

268. “A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.”

— Alfred Tennyson

269. “I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To holy virgins in their ecstasies.”

— Alfred Tennyson

270. “For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.”

— Alfred Tennyson

271. “The words ‘far, far away’ had always a strange charm.”

— Alfred Tennyson

272. “Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.”

— Alfred Tennyson

273. “I have led her home, my love, my only friend. There is none like her, none, And never yet so warmly ran my blood, And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wished for end, Full to the banks, close on the prom- ised good.”

— Alfred Tennyson

274. “She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.”

— Alfred Tennyson

275. “He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”

— Alfred Tennyson

276. “The thrall in person may be free in soul.”

— Alfred Tennyson

277. “We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites And private hates with our defence of Heaven.”

— Alfred Tennyson

278. “Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.”

— Alfred Tennyson

279. “Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.”

— Alfred Tennyson

280. “I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men.”

— Alfred Tennyson

281. “This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim.”

— Alfred Tennyson

282. “Man’s word is God in man.”

— Alfred Tennyson

283. “A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.”

— Alfred Tennyson

284. “The white flower of a blameless life.”

— Alfred Tennyson

285. “Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail.”

— Alfred Tennyson

286. “It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew.”

— Alfred Tennyson

287. “So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not.”

— Alfred Tennyson

288. “And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.”

— Alfred Tennyson

289. “Rich in saving common-sense, And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime.”

— Alfred Tennyson

290. “But the churchmen fain would kill their church, As the churches have kill’d their Christ.”

— Alfred Tennyson

291. “She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room.”

— Alfred Tennyson

292. “That man’s the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.”

— Alfred Tennyson

293. “Tis not your work, but Love’s. Love, unperceived, A more ideal Artist he than all, Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than the darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March.”

— Alfred Tennyson

294. “On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God, Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.”

— Alfred Tennyson

295. “And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan.”

— Alfred Tennyson

296. “Oh yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill!”

— Alfred Tennyson

297. “We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.”

— Alfred Tennyson

298. “How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise.”

— Alfred Tennyson

299. “Name and fame! to fly sublime Through the courts, the camps, the schools Is to be the ball of Time, Bandied in the hands of fools.”

— Alfred Tennyson

300. “The many fail: the one succeeds.”

— Alfred Tennyson