William Wordsworth

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

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

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.

Every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.

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

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.

Me this uncharted 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.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.

We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of Science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

The earth was all before me. With a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about; and should the chosen guide Be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way.

But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for humankind, Is happy as a lover.

What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.