Alfred Lord Tennyson Quotations

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

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

My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.

Love is the only gold.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro' nature, moulding men.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Who is wise in love, love most, say least.

Sin is too stupid to see beyond itself.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

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

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.

All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.

Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was love.

Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hours will last.

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Better not be at all than not be noble.

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

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

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.

I am a part of all that I have met.

We cannot be kind to each other here for even an hour. We whisper, and hint, and chuckle and grin at our brother's shame; however you take it we men are a little breed.

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

A day may sink or save a realm.

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

Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.

He makes no friends who never made a foe.

A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.

What rights are those that dare not resist for them?

The same words conceal and declare the thoughts of men.

In the long years liker they must grow; The man be more of woman, she of man.

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

There's no glory like those who save their country.

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

Current among men, Like coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.

Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

Faith lives in honest doubt.

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

Trust me not at all, or all in all.

The greater person is one of courtesy.

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.

Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.

God made thee good as thou art beautiful.

God and Nature met in light.

This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim.

I wind about, and in and out, - With here a blossom sailing, - And here and there a lusty trout, - And here and there a grayling...

I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds.

The woman's cause is man's. They rise or sink Together. / Dwarf'd or godlike, bound or free; miserable, / How shall men grow? - Let her be / All that not harms distinctive womanhood.

The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink Together.

I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?

All is well, tho' faith and form Be sunder'd in the night of fear.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, Rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies, Tangled in a silver braid.

Oh good gray head which all men knew!

Here at the quiet limit of the world.

And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan.

My mind is clouded with a doubt.

Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith; She reels not at the storm of warring words; She brightens at the clash of "Yes" and "No"; She sees the best that glimmers through the worst; She feels the sun is hid for the night; She spies the summer through the winter bud; She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls; She hears the lark within the songless egg; She finds the fountain where they wailed "Mirage!"

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

Man's word is God in man.

His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

And out of darkness came the hands that reach through nature, moulding men.

For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

For now the poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry.

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.

And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.

Though thou wert scattered to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind.

All Life needs for life is possible to will.

The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remembered to have been Joyful and free from blame.

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea.

And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thoughts; Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the waves In roarings round the coral reef.

O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell.

A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas.

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

Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side ? Is there no baseness we would hide ? No inner vileness that we dread ? How many a father have I seen A sober man, among his boys Whose youth was full of foolish noise.

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

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new, That which they have done but earnest of the things which they shall do.

I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this.

Either sex alone is half itself.

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

Virtue must shape itself in deed.

And every dew-drop paints a bow.

Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle.

Ah! well away! Seasons flower and fade.

Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.

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.

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, oh sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

A life of nothing's nothing worth, From that first nothing ere his birth, To that last nothing under earth.

What are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

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

The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom.