Alfred Lord Tennyson Love Quotes and Sayings

Alfred Lord Tennyson Love Quotes and Sayings

#1 Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, A. Fragment

1. A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

#2 Merlin and Vivien

2. Who are wise in love, Love most, say least.

#3-4 Poem: In Memoriam A.H.H. [S]

3. A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ‘lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;

4. I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

#5 from Maud: O that ’twere possible

5. Oh that ’twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

#6 The Princess: A Medley [S]

6. O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

#7 The Princess: A Medley [S]

7. We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why,
And kiss’d again with tears. And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!

#8 Lancelot and Elaine [S]

8. Sweet is true love tho’ given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

#9 Lancelot and Elaine [S]

9. I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.

#10 Becket [S]

10. No—no gold. Mother says gold spoils all. Love is the only gold.

#11 Idylls of the King [S]

11. My love through flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.

#12 Idylls of the King [S]

12. He is all fault who hath no fault at all:
For who loves me must have a touch of earth

#13 The Departure, The Day-Dream [S]

13. And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old

#14 Love and Duty [S]

14. But am I not the nobler thro’ thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more thro’ Love, and greater than thy years.

#15 In Memoriam [S]

15. And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit’s inner deeps,
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?

#16 To —, WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM [S]

16. And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness.

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Excerpt from Wikipedia: Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Fellow of the Royal Society (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892), much better known as “Alfred, Lord Tennyson,” was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language.
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Sayings by Alfred Lord Tennyson

#1 The Ancient Sage

1. The shell must break before the bird can fly.

#2 Poem: The Charge of the Light Brigade, 2 December 1854

2. “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

#3 Locksley Hall

3. I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

#4-5 Poem: In Memoriam A.H.H. [S]

4. Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove

5. I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

#6 Œnone

6. Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

#7 The Higher Pantheism

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

#8 Merlin and Vivien, Idylls of the King [S]

8. And trust me not at all or all in all.

#9 Locksley Hall [S]

9. 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

#10-12 Ulysses [S]

10. I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fade
For ever and for ever when I move.

11. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

12. One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

#13 The “How” and the “Why” [S]

13. I am any man’s suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast:
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

#14 Locksley Hall

14. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

#15 Sea Dreams [S]

15. Before you prove him, rogue, and proved, forgive.
His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast.
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn’d:
And that drags down his life

#16 Two Voices [S]

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

#17 The Foresters [S]

17. …every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour…

#18 The Foresters [S]

18. Whate’er thy joys, they vanish with the day;
Whate’er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away.
To sleep! to sleep!
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past!
Sleep, happy soul! all life will sleep at last.

#19 The Princess: A Medley [S]

19. The bearing and the training of a child Is woman’s wisdom.
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Misattributed to Alfred Lord Tennyson

1. If I had a single flower for every time I think of you, I could walk forever in my garden.

– Claudia Adrienne Grandi (May be a pseudonym for Claudia Adrienne Demilia) [S]