Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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!
This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.
Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue.
He who feels contempt for any living thing hath faculties that he hath never used, and thought with him is in its infancy.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love.
Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and mountains; and of all that we behold from this green earth.
Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth.
Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams.
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
Scorn not the sonnet. Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
Serene will be our days, and bright and happy will our nature be, when love is an unerring light, and joy its own security.
My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect.
The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives.
O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.
True beauty dwells in deep retreats, Whose veil is unremoved Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved.
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.
The clouds that gather round the setting sun, Do take a sober colouring from an eye, That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.
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.
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget, Chaste Snow-drop, venturous harbinger of Spring, And pensive monitor of fleeting years!
How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.
Because the good old rule Sufficeth them,-the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can.
There is a comfort in the strength of love; 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.
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.
All men feel a habitual gratitude, and something of an honorable bigotry, for the objects which have long continued to please them.
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science
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.
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.
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!
A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light
That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country--am I to be blamed?
in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
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
Science appears but what in truth she is, Not as our glory and our absolute boast, But as a succedaneum, and a prop To our infirmity.
A lawyer art thou? Draw not nigh! Go, carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of that sallow face.
And now I see with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine. A being breathing thoughtful breaths, A traveler between life and death.
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!
Imagination is the means of deep insight and sympathy, the power to conceive and express images removed from normal objective reality.
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.
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.
But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
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.
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, Are scattered at the feet of Man, like flowers.
Thought and theory must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
I look for ghosts; but none will force Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Between the living and the dead.
And when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,-alas! too few.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.
Yet sometimes, when the secret cup Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up, He felt with spirit so profound.
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.