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

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

Thou unassuming common-place of Nature, with that homely face.
William Wordsworth

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.
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, Childhood, Youth

The poet’s darling.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Flowers

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Anxiety, Fear

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity
William Wordsworth
Topics: Suffering

Worldings revelling in the fields
Of strenuous idleness.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Idleness, One liners

His high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Light

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

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

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Past, The Past

True dignity abides with him only, who, in the silent hour of inward thought, can still suspect, and still revere himself, in lowliness of heart.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Humility, Dignity

Stern winter loves a dirge-like sound.
William Wordsworth

For I have learned
To look on the nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense of sublime
Of something far more deeply infused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the minds of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All living things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth, of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear—both what they half create,
And what they perceive, will be pleased to recognize
In nature and the Language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul
Of all my moral being.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Music, Wilderness, Nature

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Nature

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

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

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

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

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

Pleasure is spread through the earth. In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Happiness, Gifts

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

To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together – humble dependence and manly independence: humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self.
William Wordsworth
Topics: Independence, Self-reliance

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

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

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

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

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.
William Wordsworth
Topics: God

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

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