Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Quotes

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me,
than in half the creeds.
The greater man the greater courtesy.
Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds.
Believing where we cannot prove.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be happier.
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Happiness, Passion, Sex
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
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.
I am a part of all I have seen.
Ah, what shall I be at fifty,
should nature keep me alive,
if I find the world so bitter
when I am but twenty-five?
For I dipped into the future, as far as human eye could see, saw a vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
...For the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Knowledge, Wisdom