Quotes from Alfred Lord Tennyson

My life has crept so long on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.

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

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.

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

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

Life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom, To shape and use.

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

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

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

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

That tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.

Attain the unattainable.

The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set, gray life, and apathetic end.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees.

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot.

All Life needs for life is possible to will.

So dear a life your arms enfold, Whose crying is a cry for gold.

It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round.

Ah, why Should life all labour be?

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string? I am shamed through all my nature to have lov'd so slight a thing.

Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

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