William Wordsworth Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to William Wordsworth. Here they are! All 100 of them:

β€œ
The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop Than when we soar.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Excursion 1814 (Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834))
β€œ
Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be...
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Nature never did betray The heart that loved her.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Rest and be thankful.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Great Narrative Poems of the Romantic Age)
β€œ
Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Prelude)
β€œ
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
”
”
William Wordsworth (I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud)
β€œ
A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart. -Michael: A Pastoral Poem
”
”
William Wordsworth (William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney)
β€œ
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The eye--it cannot choose but see; We cannot bid the ear be still; Our bodies feel, where'er they be, Against or with our will.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man;
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Habit rules the unreflecting herd.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey)
β€œ
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
β€œ
Then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Be mild, and cleave to gentle things, thy glory and thy happiness be there.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
What we have loved Others will love And we will teach them how.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
To begin, begin.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how; instruct them how the mind of man becomes a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells...
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
β€œ
I had melancholy thoughts... a strangeness in my mind, A feeling that I was not for that hour, Nor for that place.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Prelude)
β€œ
The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
... and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Great God! I'd rather be a Pagan....
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Wild is the music of autumnal winds Amongst the faded woods.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Selected Poetry (The World's Classics))
β€œ
I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man...
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey)
β€œ
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 (The Prelude)
β€œ
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd A host of golden daffodils Beside the lake beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
”
”
William Wordsworth (I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud)
β€œ
The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.
”
”
Helen Bevington (When Found, Make a Verse of)
β€œ
Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of thingsβ€” We murder to dissect.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Look at you comforting others with the words you wish to hear.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.β€”Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Major Works)
β€œ
And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much, The self-sufficing power of solitude.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Prelude)
β€œ
She Was A Phantom of Delight She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament: Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; 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. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death: The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
poetry is the breath and finer spirit of knowledge
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Faith is a passionate intuition.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
A simple child. That lightly draws its breath. And feels its life in every limb. What should it know of death?
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
In ourselves our safety must be sought. By our own right hand it must be wrought.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting...
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Major Works)
β€œ
Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Splendour in the Grass What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. --
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;β€” Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
β€œ
From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Therefore, let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty-mountain winds be free to blow against thee.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
In sleep I heard the northern gleams; The stars they were among my dreams; In sleep did I behold the skies
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene, The memory of what has been, And never more will be.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
All that we behold is full of blessings.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
I'll teach my boy the sweetest things; I'll teach him how the owlet sings.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
An orphans curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! How more horrible that that Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
”
”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
β€œ
I listen'd, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Major Works)
β€œ
..........books are yours, Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of gold And orient gems, which, for a day of need, The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs. These hoards of truth you can unlock at will:
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Hence, in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
”
”
William Wordsworth (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
β€œ
This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The good die first.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
A deep distress hath humanised my soul.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Books! tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Wordsworth: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series))
β€œ
Duty were our games.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Prelude)
β€œ
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Go to the poets, they will speak to thee More perfectly of purer creatures--
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Prelude)
β€œ
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! β€”Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Works of William Wordsworth)
β€œ
76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – TraitΓ© Γ‰lΓ©mentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. HonorΓ© de Balzac – PΓ¨re Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri PoincarΓ© – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
”
”
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
β€œ
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;β€” Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. β€”But there’s a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have look’d upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
”
”
William Wordsworth (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)
β€œ
And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine A being breathing thoughtful breath A traveler betwixt life and death The reason firm the temperate will Endurance Foresight Strength and skill
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the house of man.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Therefore am I still / A lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains; and of all that we behold / From this green earth; of all the mighty world / Of eye and ear, both what they half create / And what perceive; well pleased to recognize / In nature and the language of the sense, / The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey)
β€œ
I heard a thousand blended notes While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)
β€œ
She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament: Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Surprised by joyβ€”impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transportβ€”Oh! with whom But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mindβ€” But how could I forget thee? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!β€”That thought's return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
”
”
William Wordsworth (The Works of William Wordsworth)
β€œ
Lines Written In Early Spring I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure:-- But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
Imagination! lifting up itself Before the eye and progress of my Song Like and unfather'd vapour; here that Power In all the might of its endowments, came Athwart me; I was lost as in a cloud, Halted without a struggle to break through, And now recovering to my Soul I say I recognize they glory; in such strength Of usurpation, in such visitings Of awful promise, when the light of sense Goes out in flashes that have shewn to us The invisible world, doth Greatness make abode There harbours whether we be young or old. Our destiny, our nature, and our home Is with infinitude, and only there; With hope it is, hope that can never die, Effort, and expectation, and desire, And something evermore about to be.
”
”
William Wordsworth (William Wordsworth's The prelude : with a selection from the shorter poems, the sonnets, The recluse, and The excursion and three essays on the art of poetry)
β€œ
If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light, Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content: -- The stars pre-eminent in magnitude, And they that from the zenith dart their beams, (Visible though they be to half the earth, Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness) Are yet of no diviner origin, No purer essence, than the one that burns, Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps, Among the branches of the leafless trees. All are the undying offspring of one Sire: Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed, Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.
”
”
William Wordsworth
β€œ
She fed him scraps from her ragbag because words were all that were left now. Perhaps he could use them to pay the ferryman. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. Full fathom five thy father lies. Little lamb, who made thee? Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie. On that best portion of a good man's life, his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love. Farther and farther, all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The air rippled and shimmered. Time narrowed to a pinpoint. It was about to happen. Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
”
”
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins (Todd Family, #2))
β€œ
Miltons were, on the whole, the most enthusiastic poet followers. A flick through the London telephone directory would yield about four thousand John Miltons, two thousand William Blakes, a thousand or so Samuel Colleridges, five hundred Percy Shelleys, the same of Wordsworth and Keats, and a handful of Drydens. Such mass name-changing could have problems in law enforcement. Following an incident in a pub where the assailant, victim, witness, landlord, arresting officer and judge had all been called Alfred Tennyson, a law had been passed compelling each namesake to carry a registration number tattooed behind the ear. It hadn't been well received--few really practical law-enforcement measures ever are.
”
”
Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1))
β€œ
Brian Wilson went to bed for three years. Jean-Michel Basquiat would spend all day in bed. Monica Ali, Charles Bukowski, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tracey Emin, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, Frida Kahlo, William Wordsworth, RenΓ© Descartes, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, Kathy Acker, Derek Jarman and Patti Smith all worked or work from bed and they’re productive people. (Am I protesting too much?) Humans take to their beds for all sorts of reasons: because they’re overwhelmed by life, need to rest, think, recover from illness and trauma, because they’re cold, lonely, scared, depressed – sometimes I lie in bed for weeks with a puddle of depression in my sternum – to work, even to protest (Emily Dickinson, John and Yoko). Polar bears spend six months of the year sleeping, dormice too. Half their lives are spent asleep, no one calls them lazy. There’s a region in the South of France, near the Alps, where whole villages used to sleep through the seven months of winter – I might be descended from them. And in 1900, it was recorded that peasants from Pskov in northwest Russia would fall into a deep winter sleep called lotska for half the year: β€˜for six whole months out of the twelve to be in the state of Nirvana longed for by Eastern sages, free from the stress of life, from the need to labour, from the multitudinous burdens, anxieties, and vexations of existence’.‑ Even when I’m well I like to lie in bed and think. It’s as if
”
”
Viv Albertine (To Throw Away Unopened)
β€œ
If thou be one whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure, Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know, that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one, The least of nature's works, one who might move The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads)