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

For by superior energies; more strict affiance in each other; faith more firm in their unhallowed principles, the bad have fairly earned a victory over the weak, the vacillating, inconsistent good.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Defeat

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

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

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
Topics: Writers

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

The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, lie scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Charity

Wisdom is oft times nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Wisdom

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: Being True to Yourself, Persistence, Perseverance

The stars are mansions built by nature’s hand, and, haply, there the spirits of the blest dwell, clothed in radiance, their immortal rest.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Stars

A day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Golf

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

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

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

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

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

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

She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature

Faith is a passionate intuition.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Intuition, Faith, Belief

The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Flowers

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Writing

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

Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature, Wilderness, Light

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.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature, World

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

Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce of that serene companion, a good name, recovers not his loss; but walks with shame, with doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Reputation

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 comet from afar: 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
Topics: Birth

Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Gardening

What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars.
—William Wordsworth
Topics: Pride

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.
—William Wordsworth

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: Travel, Tourism

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