A louse in the locks of literature.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Better not be at all than not be noble.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Honor
So much to do, so little done, such things to be.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Success & Failure, Achievement
In time there is no present, In eternity no future, In eternity no past.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Eternity
Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Prayer
Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness, Misfortune, Grief
The jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Corruption
The mighty hopes that make us men.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Hope
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Life
Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Kindness, Faith
Once he drew, with one long kiss, my whole soul through my lips.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Kisses
Forgive! How many will say, “forgive,” and find a sort of absolution in the sound to hate a little longer!
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Forgiveness
The greater person is one of courtesy.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Manners
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
After-dinner talk Across the walnuts and the wine.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: One liners, Wine
God’s finger touched him and he slept.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Death, Dying
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Perfection
We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Endurance, Perseverance, Resolve
Ours not to reason why
Ours but to do and die.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Duty
Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The older order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A truth looks freshest in the fashions of the day.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Truth
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Ambition, Possibilities
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Dedication, Commitment, Success
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Laziness, Moving on, Blessings, Idleness, Love, Better
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Wine
Every minute dies a man, every minute one is born.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Death
A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Topics: Change
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- A. E. Housman English Scholar, Poet
- John Dryden English Poet
- Charles Darwin British Naturalist
- Enoch Powell British Politician
- Edith Sitwell British Poet
- William Wordsworth English Poet
- Samuel Johnson British Essayist
- Rudyard Kipling British Children’s Books Writer
- T. S. Eliot American-born British Poet
- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) British Anglican Author
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