William Wordsworth quotes

And he is no mean preacher; Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

With tranquil restoration:--feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also thought long and deeply.

I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

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, 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 sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and 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.

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, [7] And what perceive; well 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.

"The eye it cannot chuse but see, We cannot bid the ear be still; Our bodies feel, where'er they be, Against, or with our will."

On that best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things; --We murder to dissect.

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,[5] And what perceive; well 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.