330 quotes
A Man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows.
The Excursion (1814)
Wisdom is oftimes nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.
The Excursion (1814)
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
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?
He knows but from its shade the present hour.
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind.
A man of hope and forward-looking mind.
The Excursion (1814)
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Small service is true service while it lasts.
Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one:
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
To a Child. Written in her Album (1834)
O, sir! the good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.
The Excursion (1814)
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!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
Character of the Happy Warrior (1806)
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth all together, if it moves at all.
Resolution and Independence (1807)
Is there not
An art, a music, and a stream of words
That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?
The Recluse (1805)
The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way!
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.
Ode to Duty (1805)
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
Peter Bell (1798)