Top 400 William Wordsworth Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay.”

— William Wordsworth

202. “Everything is tedious when one does not read with the feeling of the Author.”

— William Wordsworth

203. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting...”

— William Wordsworth

204. “He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.”

— William Wordsworth

205. “And often, glad no more, We wear a face of joy because We have been glad of yore.”

— William Wordsworth

206. “Or shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost.”

— William Wordsworth

207. “Meek Walton’s heavenly memory.”

— William Wordsworth

208. “But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for humankind, Is happy as a lover.”

— William Wordsworth

209. “Me this uncharted freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires, My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.”

— William Wordsworth

210. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.”

— William Wordsworth

211. “Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!”

— William Wordsworth

212. “The budding rose above the rose full blown.”

— William Wordsworth

213. “Plain living and high thinking are no more. The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.”

— William Wordsworth

214. “Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.”

— William Wordsworth

215. “A creature not too bright or good For human nature’s daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”

— William Wordsworth

216. “The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society.”

— William Wordsworth

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

— William Wordsworth

218. “O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!”

— William Wordsworth

219. “Pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.”

— William Wordsworth

220. “Fiction; inner thoughts of Elisha True beauty dwells in deep retreats, Whose veil is unremoved Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved.”

— William Wordsworth

221. “Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.”

— William Wordsworth

222. “As high as we have mounted in delight, In our dejection do we sink as low.”

— William Wordsworth

223. “Wisdom and spirit of the Universe!”

— William Wordsworth

224. “Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?”

— William Wordsworth

225. “A babe, by intercourse of touch I held mute dialogues with my Mother’s heart.”

— William Wordsworth

226. “In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is.”

— William Wordsworth

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

— William Wordsworth

228. “No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.”

— William Wordsworth

229. “How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!”

— William Wordsworth

230. “The fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.”

— William Wordsworth

231. “Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose type of things through all degrees.”

— William Wordsworth

232. “Delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood.”

— William Wordsworth

233. “Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.”

— William Wordsworth

234. “A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free.”

— William Wordsworth

235. “The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone.”

— William Wordsworth

236. “Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness.”

— William Wordsworth

237. “There’s something in a flying horse, There’s something in a huge balloon.”

— William Wordsworth

238. “Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary’s Lake Float double, swan and shadow!”

— William Wordsworth

239. “Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore of nicely-caluculated less or more.”

— William Wordsworth

240. “Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.”

— William Wordsworth

241. “Primroses, the Spring may love them; Summer knows but little of them.”

— William Wordsworth

242. “In heaven above, And earth below, they best can serve true gladness Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.”

— William Wordsworth

243. “Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet.”

— William Wordsworth

244. “Bright flower! whose home is everywhere Bold in maternal nature’s care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity, Given to no other flower I see The forest through.”

— William Wordsworth

245. “The earth was all before me. With a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about; and should the chosen guide Be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way.”

— William Wordsworth

246. “The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.”

— William Wordsworth

247. “The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, An appetite; a feeling and a love that had no need of a remoter charm by thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.”

— William Wordsworth

248. “But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.”

— William Wordsworth

249. “In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.”

— William Wordsworth

250. “Dreams, books, are each a world.”

— William Wordsworth