Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

William Wordsworth Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: England
  • Born: Apr 7, 1770
  • Died: Apr 23, 1850

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.

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.

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind.

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

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

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.

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

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.

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity.

Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

I listened, motionless and still And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

Faith is a passionate intuition.

The child is father of the man.

How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.