Alfred Lord Tennyson Quotes

Courtesy wins woman all as well. As valor may, but he that closes both is perfect.

Her court was pure, her life serene; God gave her peace; her land reposed; A thousand claims to reverence closed ...

Silence, beautiful voice.

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind.

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.

From yon blue heaven above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.

As she fled fast through sun and shade The happy winds upon her play'd, Blowing the ringlet from the braid.

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.

Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be ... And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.

What's up is faith, what's down is heresy.

The many fail: the one succeeds.

Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand the downward slope to death.

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.

As love, if love be perfect, casts out fear, so hate, if hate be perfect, casts out fear.

I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.

Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.

The sin
That neither God nor man can well forgive.

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.'

And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's inner deeps, When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?

Theirs is not to make reply: Theirs is not to reason why: Theirs is but to do and die.

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Never, oh! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.

That man's the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.

One so small Who knowing nothing knows but to obey.

Any man that walks the mead
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humors lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.

How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise.

And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!

Not once or twice in our rough island story, The path of duty was the way to glory.

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow'll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,- Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be queen o' the May.

Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or sorrow such a changeling be?

And down I went to fetch my bride: But, Alice, you were ill at ease; This dress and that by turns you tried, Too fearful that you should not please. I loved you better for your fears, I knew you could not look but well; And dews, that would have fall'n in tears, I kiss'd away before they fell.

I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods.

This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.

This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man.

Oh good gray head which all men knew!

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Earth is dry to the center,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro' ,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew.

The mirror crack'd from side to side "The curse has come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott

Sin is too stupid to see beyond itself.

There is no land like England,
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no hearts like English hearts,
Such hearts of oak as they be;
There is no land like England,
Where'er the light of day be:
There are no men like Englishmen,
So tall and bold as they be!
And these will strike for England,
And man and maid be free
To foil and spoil the tyrant
Beneath the greenwood tree.

Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone: And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

Blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, on all things all day long

A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.

We are all a part of every person we have ever met.

God gives us love, someone to love he lends us.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time.

Virtue must shape itself in deed.

The greater person is one of courtesy.

Live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.

He that wrongs his friend, wrongs himself more.

The last great Englishman is low.

The dream Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.

Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moans of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

And every dew-drop paints a bow.

Oh for someone with a heart, head and hand. Whatever they call them, what do I care, aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, just be it one that can rule and dare not lie.

We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

A simple maiden in her flower, Is worth a hundred coats of arms.

And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God, Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.

I can't sleep without knowing there's hope. Half the night I waste in sighs. In a wakeful doze I sorrow. For the hands, for the lips ... the eyes. For the meeting of tomorrow.

After-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine.

How fares it with the happy dead?

Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet.

An English homegrey twilight poured On dewy pasture, dewy trees, Softer than sleepall things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace.

But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

Come, Time, and teach me many years,
I do not suffer in dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears.

The old order changes yielding place to new.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayers.

Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills. Like footsteps upon wool.

Mastering the lawless science of our law,- that codeless myriad of precedent, that wilderness of single instances.

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

All Life needs for life is possible to will.

Through the ages one increasing purpose runs.

Wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower.

We love but while we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love.

I do but sing because I must; and pipe but as the linnets sing.

You may tell me that my hand and foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence. I could believe you, but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal reality, and that the spiritual is not the true and real part of me.

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce.

France had shown a light to all men, preached a Gospel, all men's good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot.

Broad based upon her people's will, And compassed by the inviolate sea.

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange.

The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

My mind is clouded with a doubt.

Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,While the stars burn, the moons increase,And the great ages onward roll. Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet. Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet;Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.