Alfred Tennyson Best Quotes & Sayings

What rights are those that dare not resist for them? — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
It sound of funeral or of marriage bells. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart: He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

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? — Alfred Lord Tennyson

If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? — Alfred Lord Tennyson

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Bible reading is an education in itself. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! 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,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful? — Alfred Tennyson

The noonday quiet holds the hill. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creaked;
The blue fly sang in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without. . . . — Alfred Tennyson

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;


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.


What then were God to such as I?
'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A tattle patience ere I die;


'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease. — Alfred Tennyson

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

He makes no friends who never made a foe. — Alfred Tennyson

Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales.
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.
That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew. — Alfred Tennyson

Because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tis held that sorrow makes us wise. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out the false, ring in the true. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

That man's the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darken'd earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him. — Alfred Tennyson

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, That marvellous round of milky light Below Orion, and those double stars Whereof the one more bright

Is circled by the other — Alfred Tennyson

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Arise, go forth, and conquer as of old. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Either sex alone is half itself. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — Alfred Tennyson