Quotations From WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

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• 1.

  All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

  William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet. Lyrical Ballads, preface, 2nd edition (1801). This sentiment, which is a central tenet in Wordsworth's criticism, has parallels in Schiller, Ueber Bürgers Gedichte, as well as Coleridge's Notebooks, in which he speaks of "recalling passion in tranquillity."
  
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• 2.

  The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.

  William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet. Lyrical Ballads, preface, 2nd edition (1801).
  
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• 3.

  The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

  William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (l. 9). . . The Poems; Vol. 1 [William Wordsworth]. John O. Hayden, ed. (1977, repr. 1990) Penguin Books.