We all know Alfred Lord Tennyson as the Victorian-era author of the poem “The Lady of Shallot”, but most do not know about the beautiful and motivational words that he penned or spoke during his life. Tennyson is my second favorite poet, for the story foundation, his creativity, and finally because of his language. On a dark day like today, take a moment and read through his quotes for inspiration!

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”

"By Blood a king, by heart a clown"

“Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all.”

“I am a part of all that I have met.”

“Ring out the old, ring in the new...Ring out the false, ring in the true"

"A lie which is a half truth is ever the blackest of lies."

What most people consider a 'white lie' Tennyson calls the "blackest of lies", reminding us that if any of it is not true, it's a complete lie.

“Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die”

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom stays”

“Once in a golden hour/I cast to earth a seed./Up there came a flower,/The people said, a weed.”

As a photographer, I can relate to this. I'm always focused on hidden beauty, or small, inconsequential things. I find beauty in everything, often in things that most people would just discard or ignore

“The shell must break before the bird can fly.”

“Authority forgets a dying king”

“My purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die.”

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

“Forever and forever when I move./How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!/As though to breathe were life!”

“brief is life but love is long.”

“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”

“I sometimes find it half a sin,/To put to words the grief I feel,/For words like nature, half reveal,/and half conceal the soul within,”

“A courage to endure and to obey”

“Ring out false pride in place and blood,/The civic slander and the spite;/Ring in the love of truth and right./Ring in the common love of good.”

“A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things”

“if you don't concentrate on what you are doing then the thing that you are doing is not what you are thinking.”

“Gentleness, when it weds with manhood, makes a man.”

“He makes no friend who never made a foe.”

“I can but trust that good shall fall / At last—far off—at last, to all.”

“If I be dear to someone else, / Then I should be to myself more dear”