Top 70 Thomas Hood Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “When was ever honey made with one bee in a hive?”

— Thomas Hood

2. “Half of the failures in life come from pulling one’s horse when he is leaping.”

— Thomas Hood

3. “O bed! O bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head.”

— Thomas Hood

4. “No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds – November!”

— Thomas Hood

5. “It was a childish ignorance, But now ’tis little joy To know I’m further off from heaven Than when I was a boy.”

— Thomas Hood

6. “Frost is the greatest artist in our clime – he paints in nature and describes in rime.”

— Thomas Hood

7. “Some sigh for this and that; My wishes don’t go far; The world may wag at will, So I have my cigar.”

— Thomas Hood

8. “Oh! God! That bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap!”

— Thomas Hood

9. “But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart!”

— Thomas Hood

10. “There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be,- In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found.”

— Thomas Hood

11. “Ben Battle was a soldier bold, and used to war’s alarms, But a cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms.”

— Thomas Hood

12. “The Autumn is old; The sere leaves are flying; He hath gather’d up gold, And now he is dying;- Old age, begin sighing!”

— Thomas Hood

13. “A moment’s thinking is an hour in words.”

— Thomas Hood

14. “What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.”

— Thomas Hood

15. “Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams, Unnatural and full of contradictions; Yet others of our most romantic schemes, Are something more than fictions.”

— Thomas Hood

16. “Some minds improve by travel, others, rather, resemble copper wire, or brass, which get the narrower by going farther.”

— Thomas Hood

17. “Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold!”

— Thomas Hood

18. “Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray.”

— Thomas Hood

19. “When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken, What can an old man do but die?”

— Thomas Hood

20. “Easy reading is damned hard writing.”

— Thomas Hood

21. “I resolved that, like the sun, as long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything.”

— Thomas Hood

22. “My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread.”

— Thomas Hood

23. “And there is even a happiness That makes the heart afraid.”

— Thomas Hood

24. “He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, Tormenting himself with his prickles.”

— Thomas Hood

25. “Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied; We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died.”

— Thomas Hood

26. “With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread.”

— Thomas Hood

27. “Lives of great men oft remind us as we o’er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us – Letters that we ought to burn.”

— Thomas Hood

28. “Dear bells! how sweet the sound of village bells When on the undulating air they swim!”

— Thomas Hood

29. “O men with sisters dear, O men with mothers and wives, It is not linen you ‘re wearing out, But human creatures’ lives!”

— Thomas Hood

30. “Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!”

— Thomas Hood

31. “I saw old autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence.”

— Thomas Hood

32. “Extremes meet’, as the whiting said with its tail in its mouth.”

— Thomas Hood

33. “Well for the drones of the social hive that there are bees of an industrious turn, willing, for an infinitesimal share of the honey, to undertake the labor of its fabrication.”

— Thomas Hood

34. “The best of friends fall out, and so his teeth had done some years ago.”

— Thomas Hood

35. “Bells are musics laughter.”

— Thomas Hood

36. “There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.”

— Thomas Hood

37. “The year’s in wane; There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning!”

— Thomas Hood

38. “How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!”

— Thomas Hood

39. “Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the book of Nature Getteth short of leaves.”

— Thomas Hood

40. “To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind.”

— Thomas Hood

41. “She stood breast-high amid the corn Clasp’d by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won.”

— Thomas Hood

42. “The moon, the moon, so silver and cold, Her fickle temper has oft been told, Now shade – now bright and sunny – But of all the lunar things that change, The one that shows most fickle and strange, And takes the most eccentric range, Is the moon – so called – of honey!”

— Thomas Hood

43. “Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!”

— Thomas Hood

44. “When Eve upon the first of Men The apple press’d with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not Adamant!”

— Thomas Hood

45. “Pity it is to slay the meanest thing.”

— Thomas Hood

46. “No blessed leisure for love or hope, But only time for grief.”

— Thomas Hood

47. “Oh would I were dead now, Or up in my bed now, To cover my head now, And have a good cry!”

— Thomas Hood

48. “The cowslip is a country wench.”

— Thomas Hood

49. “A man that’s fond precociously of stirring, :;:; Must be a spoon.”

— Thomas Hood

50. “Comfort and indolence are cronies.”

— Thomas Hood