Best Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson Quotes

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.

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.

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

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

My strength has the strength of ten because my heart is pure.

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

Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.

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

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more.

A truth looks freshest in the fashions of the day.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

The jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.

That man's the true Conservative who lops the moldered branch away.

What rights are those that dare not resist for them?

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

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

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

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Matchd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times I have enjoydGreatly, have sufferd greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known,cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honord of them all,And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethroGleams that untravelld world whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnishd, not to shine in use!As tho to breathe were life! Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho much is taken, much abides; and thoWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there raind a ghastly dewFrom the nations airy navies grappling in the central blue;Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,With the standards of the peoples plunging thro the thunder-storm;Till the war-drums throbbd, no longer, and the battle-flags were furldIn the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

The older order changeth, yielding place to new,And God fulfils himself in many ways,Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

I hold it true, whateer befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill!

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.

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

Forgive! How many will say, forgive, and find a sort of absolution in the sound to hate a little longer!

The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow.

Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.

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

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

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.

Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.

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