Tennyson Quotes

• There Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt, Believe Me, Than Half the Creeds. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Fannie Flagg

  Faith, Believe, Doubt

  Fannie Flagg (2013). “Fried Green Tomatoes, Can't Wait to Get to Heaven, and I Still Dream About You: Three Bestselling Novels”, p.777, Random House

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• Prayer works in the mind as a healing force. It calms the patient, enlightens the physician, guides the surgeon, and it often victoriously applies the power of the spirit when all seems lost. It proves, over and over again, the truth of Tennyson's words: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Prayer puts us on God's side. It aligns us with life's higher purposes, aims, and ideals. Prayer is dedicating our thought, feeling and action to the expression of goodness. It is to become like a window through which the light of God shines.

  Wilferd Peterson

  Dream, Prayer, Healing

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• Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.

  Samuel Butler

  Dream, Prayer, World

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• Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.

  A. N. Wilson

  Men, Saint, Poet

  "Tennyson's In Memoriam: a farewell to religious certainty" by A. N. Wilson, www.theguardian.com. January 4, 2011.

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• My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few.

  Debbie Macomber

  Children, Wall, Names

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• This is why it is good to remember: if you want to get high, don’t drink whiskey; read Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, Neruda, Hopkins, Millay, Whitman, aloud and let your body sing.

  Natalie

  Getting High, Body, Want

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• [In response to Alfred Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin," which included the line "Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born."] If this were true, the population of the world would be at a stand-still. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poem should read: "Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 [and] 1/16 is born." Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 [and] 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

  Charles Babbage

  Believe, Men, Long

  New Scientist (p. 1428), December 4, 1958.

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• All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Bird, Crow

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1661, Delphi Classics

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• I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn't it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no bookin my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson's.

  Carolyn Wells

  Book, Reading, Thinking

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• The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.

  William Monahan

  Art, Practice, House

  Source: collider.com

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• The little bee returns with evening's gloom,
  To join her comrades in the braided hive,
  Where, housed beside their might honey-comb,
  They dream their polity shall long survive.
  Charles Tennyson Turner - A Summer Night in the Bee Hive
  The happiness of the bee & the dolphin is to exist.
  For man it is to know that & to wonder at it.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Summer, Dream, Night

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• Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swooned, nor uttered cry: All her maidens, watching, said, 'She must weep or she will die.' Then they praised him, soft and low, Called him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stepped, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee- Like summer tempest came her tears- 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.' -Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Colleen Houck

  Summer, Sweet, Children

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• If there is one word that describes the meaning of character, it is the word honor. Without honor, civilization would not long exist. Without honor, there could be no dependable contracts, no lasting marriages, no trust or happiness. What does the word honor mean to you? To me, honor is summarized in this expression by the poet Tennyson, "Man's word [of honor] is God in man."

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Happiness, Trust, Character

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• It strikes me as very strange that whereas Tennyson could support most of Mr. Buckley's propositions about free trade, and the private sector, and private enterprise, Tennyson found no difficulty also in lending intellectual support to the idea of Women's Liberation.

  Germaine Greer

  Ideas, Support, Intellectual

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• Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth.

  David Eddings

  Kings, Inspiration, Knights

  David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (2007). “The Rivan Codex: Ancient Texts of THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREON”, p.6, Del Rey

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• It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.

  Neal Shusterman

  Bully, Arrogance, Doe

  Neal Shusterman (2010). “Bruiser”, p.21, Harper Collins

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• I get no sense from his note at all,” said Will, bounding to his feet, “except that he can quote Tennyson’s lesser poetry. Sophie, how quickly can you have Tessa ready?” “Half an hour,” said Sophie, not looking up from the dress. “Meet me in the courtyard in half an hour, then,” said Will. “I’ll wake Cyril. And be prepared to swoon at my finery.

  Cassandra Clare

  Feet, Dresses, Sophie

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• Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an exact homology exists between painting and poetry on the one hand and modem chemistry and modem algebra on the other. In poetry and algebra we have the pure idea elaborated and expressed through the vehicle of language, in painting and chemistry the idea enveloped in matter, depending in part on manual processes and the resources of art for its due manifestation.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Art, Hands, Ideas

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• Lonnie says it doesn't take long to write a song if you're stricken with a severe case of the Tennysons. He wasn't necessarily talking about a chart-climber.

  Dan Jenkins

  Song, Writing, Talking

  Dan Jenkins (2010). “Baja Oklahoma”, p.26, Texas A&M University Press

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• The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Grandmother, Kind, Poet

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• Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Doubt, Horrible, Happened

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1991). “Selected Letters”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.

  T. S. Eliot

  Thinking, Rose, Poet

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.256, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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