Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Wordsworth (English Poet)

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was one of Britain’s most eminent poets. He was a major poet of the Romantic Movement and was appointed England’s Poet Laureate in 1843. Wordsworth is recognized for his lyrical style of poetry, which was inspired by the landscape of the Lake District, where he spent much of his life. His best work is such poems as “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (also commonly known as “Daffodils,”) “The Ruined Cottage,” “Michael,” “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” and “The Solitary Reaper.”

Born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, Wordsworth graduated from Cambridge and then traveled to Europe. During the French Revolution, he left a young family behind in France and returned to England. He settled in with his beloved sister and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Wordsworth and Coleridge took long walks together in the Lake District, expounding about philosophy and English poetry, which they believed was too precise and prudish and did not appeal to the ordinary person. Together they wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798) in which they wrote poetry in everyday speech. First published without the names of the authors, the poems were greeted with resentment by most critics, but Lyrical Ballads arguably defined the Romantic Movement.

Wordsworth’s major work was his autobiographical poem The Prelude “containing views of Man, Nature, and Society.” Completed in 1805, he continued to revise it. It was published after his death.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Wordsworth

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Action

Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Romance

Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Childhood

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, The work of Fancy, or some happy tone Of meditation, slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Meditation

We live by admiration, hope and love.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Love

The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
—William Wordsworth

The child is the father of the man.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children

That blessed mood in which the burthen of the mystery, in which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world is lightened.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Contentment

Small service is true service, while it lasts.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Service

Not Chaos, not the darkest pit of lowest Erebus, nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out by help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe as fall upon us often when we look into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: The Mind, Mind

Self-inspection—the best cure for self-esteem.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Self-improvement

How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Brothers

Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, one of a mighty multitude whose way and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Birds

Poetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Poetry

Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Dreams

Oft in my way have I stood still, though but a casual passenger, so much I felt the awfulness of life.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Life

Whether we be young or old, our destiny, our being’s heart and 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

The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Drugs

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Age, Aging

Neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall ever prevail against us.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Perseverance, Being True to Yourself, Persistence

From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Guilt

Miss not the occasion; by the fore lock take that subtle power, the never-halting time.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Opportunity

Lost in a gloom of uninspired research.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Research

Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Idleness

Life is divided into three terms – that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.
—William Wordsworth

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Children, Youth, Childhood

Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd.
—William Wordsworth

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Aging, Age

Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Water

I traveled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea; nor England! did I know till then what love I bore to thee.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Tourism, Travel

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