Quotes from Alfred Lord Tennyson

A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.

I can't sleep without knowing there's hope. Half the night I waste in sighs. In a wakeful doze I sorrow. For the hands, for the lips... the eyes. For the meeting of tomorrow.

Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Be near me when my light is low... And all the wheels of being slow.

Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayers.

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?

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

Kind hearts are more than coronets / And simple faith than Norman blood.

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:Man for the sword and for the needle she:Man with the head and woman with the heart:Man to command and woman to obey;All else confusion.

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furledIn the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—Else, wherefore born?

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,Dead perfection, no more.

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

The great brandMade lightnings in the splendor of the moon,And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,Seen where the moving isles of winter shockBy night, with noises of the northern sea,So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur.

There hath he lain for ages and will lieBattening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;Then once by man and angels to be seen,In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

He makes no friend who never made a foe.

Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease.

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:The old order changeth, yielding place to new;And God fulfills himself in many ways,Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Fresh from brawling courtsAnd dusty purlieus of the law.

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race.

Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-longThat on the stretched forefinger of all TimeSparkle forever.