Quotes to inspire and reflect

The way was long, the wind was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheek, and tresses gray, Seem’d to have known a better day.

Scorn not the sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

Small service is true service while it lasts: Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things.

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more.

We feel that we are greater than we know.

The unimaginable touch of Time.

An ampler ether, a diviner air.

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind.

Had ripened into faith, and faith become A passionate intuition.

Are often those of whom the noisy world Hears least.

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.

A power is passing from the earth.

Two voices are there: one is of the sea, 6 One of the mountains; each a mighty voice.

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

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; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Who, doomed to go in company with pain, And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room.

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be?

The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet’s dream.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires; My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty!

To check the erring, and reprove.

Which is the bliss of solitude.

A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way.

A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command. And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine.

She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment’s ornament.

The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.

To perish never.

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, But trailing clouds of glory do we come Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.