“Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.”
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Quote authors
Author detail
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1<sup>st</sup> Baron Tennyson, FRS, 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. Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, "In the valley of Cauteretz", "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as Ulysses, although In Memoriam A.H.H. was written to commemorate his best friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and fellow student at Trinity College, Cambridge, who was engaged to Tennyson's sister, but died from a cerebral hemorrhage before they were married. Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success. Tennyson wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the English language, including: "Nature, red in tooth and claw", "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all", "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure", "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding place to new". He is the second most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.<sup>[1][1]</sup> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson
Quotes
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“Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...”
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“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. Verse XXVII”
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“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of t...”
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“Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world.”
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“The shell must break before the bird can fly.”
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“O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.”
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“Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made.”
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“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
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“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak b...”
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“Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed.”
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“In Memoriam A.H.H. Section 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. But, for the unquiet heart...”
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“How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! As tho’ to breathe were life!”
“For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.”
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“I came in haste with cursing breath, And heart of hardest steel; But when I saw thee cold in death, I felt as man should feel. For when I look upon that face, That cold, unheeding, frigid br...”
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“And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
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“Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.”
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“But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal...”
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“Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all? ....”
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“Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life,...”
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