Top 400 William Wordsworth Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Poetry has never brought me in enough money to buy shoestrings.”

— William Wordsworth

352. “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.”

— William Wordsworth

353. “Nature’s old felicities.”

— William Wordsworth

354. “By happy chance we saw A twofold image: on a grassy bank A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same!”

— William Wordsworth

355. “Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.”

— William Wordsworth

356. “He who feels contempt for any living thing hath faculties that he hath never used, and thought with him is in its infancy.”

— William Wordsworth

357. “In years that bring the philosophic mind.”

— William Wordsworth

358. “The very flowers are sacred to the poor.”

— William Wordsworth

359. “But who would force the soul tilts with a straw Against a champion cased in adamant.”

— William Wordsworth

360. “The Eagle, he was lord above.”

— William Wordsworth

361. “Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness.”

— William Wordsworth

362. “Like thoughts whose very sweetness yielded proof that they were born for immortality.”

— William Wordsworth

363. “For all things are less dreadful than they seem.”

— William Wordsworth

364. “One with more of soul in his face than words on his tongue.”

— William Wordsworth

365. “The softest breeze to fairest flowers gives birth: Think not that Prudence dwells in dark abodes, She scans the future with the eye of gods.”

— William Wordsworth

366. “Spade! Thou art a tool of honor in my hands. I press thee, through a yielding soil, with pride.”

— William Wordsworth

367. “Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold.”

— William Wordsworth

368. “I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.”

— William Wordsworth

369. “The heavy weight of many a weary day Not mine, and such as were not made for me.”

— William Wordsworth

370. “And he is oft the wisest manWho is not wise at all.”

— William Wordsworth

371. “And what if thou, sweet May, hast known Mishap by worm and blight; If expectations newly blown Have perished in thy sight; If loves and joys, while up they sprung, Were caught as in a snare; Such is the lot of all the young, However bright and fair.”

— William Wordsworth

372. “Society became my glittering bride, And airy hopes my children.”

— William Wordsworth

373. “A Briton even in love should be A subject, not a slave!”

— William Wordsworth

374. “Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.”

— William Wordsworth

375. “That kill the bloom before its time, And blanch, without the owner’s crime, The most resplendent hair.”

— William Wordsworth

376. “What know we of the Blest above but that they sing, and that they love?”

— William Wordsworth

377. “We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted.”

— William Wordsworth

378. “These hoards of wealth you can unlock at will.”

— William Wordsworth

379. “Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!”

— William Wordsworth

380. “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony.”

— William Wordsworth

381. “The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.”

— William Wordsworth

382. “When his veering gait And every motion of his starry train Seem governed by a strain Of music, audible to him alone.”

— William Wordsworth

383. “A poet does not see or hear or feel things that others do not see or hear or feel. What makes a person a poet is the ability to recall what she has felt and seen and heard. And to relive it and describe it in such a way that others can then see and feel and hear again what they may have missed.”

— William Wordsworth

384. “Take the sweet poetry of life away, and what remains behind?”

— William Wordsworth

385. “Monastic brotherhood, upon rock Aerial.”

— William Wordsworth

386. “And I am happy when I sing.”

— William Wordsworth

387. “Oft in my way have I stood still, though but a casual passenger, so much I felt the awfulness of life.”

— William Wordsworth

388. “Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?”

— William Wordsworth

389. “I’m not talking about a “show me other walls of this thing” button, I mean a “stumble” button for wallbase.”

— William Wordsworth

390. “While all the future, for thy purer soul, With “sober certainties” of love is blest.”

— William Wordsworth

391. “Our meddlesome intellect misshapen the beauteous form of things.”

— William Wordsworth

392. “Stop thinking for once in your life!”

— William Wordsworth

393. “Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives.”

— William Wordsworth

394. “But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things.”

— William Wordsworth

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

— William Wordsworth

396. “On a fair prospect some have looked, And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away.”

— William Wordsworth

397. “Earth helped him with the cry of blood.”

— William Wordsworth

398. “The Man of Science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and love it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.”

— William Wordsworth

399. “Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.”

— William Wordsworth

400. “That mighty orb of song, The divine Milton.”

— William Wordsworth