Quotes
Quotes - Tennyson
In me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great.
I know not if I know what true love is,
But if I know, then, if I love not him,
I know there is none other I can love.
The shackles of an old love straitened him,
His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain.
He makes no friend who never made a foe.
Let love be free; free love is for the best
And after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness?
All the heavens
Opened and blazed with thunder such as seemed
Shoutings of all the sons of God.
O great and sane and simple race of brutes
That own no lust because they have no law
Strength of heart
And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,
Are winners in this pastime.
I have had my day and my philosophies.
The greater man the greater courtesy.
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.
For courtesy wins woman all as well
As valor may.
For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of noble mind.
No more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man
But teach high thought and amiable words
And courtliness and the desire of fame
And love of truth and all that makes a man.
For why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would?
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
I am going a long way
With these thou seest--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail or rain or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
"I'll never love any but you," the morning song of the lark;
"I'll never love any but you," the nightingale's hymn in the dark.
My God, I would not live
Save that I think this gross hard-seeming world
Is our misshaping vision of the Powers
Behind the world, that make our griefs our gains.
The golden guess
Is morning-star to the full round of truth.
No sound is breathed so potent to coerce
And to conciliate, as their names who dare
For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die.
A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a prince's hall.
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
My friends and brother souls,
With all the peoples, great and small,
That wheel between the poles.
