Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Alfred, Lord Tennyson with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.”
Meaning & context
Love can remain worth having even when it ends in loss, because avoiding grief by avoiding attachment would also remove the relationship itself.
Source details
In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto XXVII, closing stanza; represented by the Wikisource canto transcription and independently visible on printed page 44 / scan leaf 64 of a public-domain edition. Tennyson's 'loved and lost' conclusion belongs to the elegy's grief for Arthur Hallam and its argument that love remains valuable despite bereavement; it is poetry, not a clinical grief prescription.
Source identified2
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“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
Meaning & context
Facts can be acquired quickly, while judgment develops more slowly through reflection and experience.
Source details
Poem “Locksley Hall”; the contrast distinguishes readily acquired knowledge from the slower development of judgment and wisdom.
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“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”
Meaning & context
Tennyson joins respect for oneself with knowledge and restraint: durable personal power is presented as the result of living by an inward law rather than seeking power merely for its own sake.
Source details
Oenone, in The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Project Gutenberg #8601. Pallas speaks the lines while arguing that self-reverence, self-knowledge and self-control lead to a life governed by right rather than by reward; this is poetic character speech, not a prose maxim detached from the poem.
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“Tho’ much is taken, much abides.”
Meaning & context
Loss and limitation are acknowledged without allowing them to erase what remains possible or valuable.
Source details
Ulysses, near the close of the poem.
Source identified5
Image design Lavender
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“I am a part of all that I have met.”
Meaning & context
Identity is shaped by accumulated encounters, so places, people, and experiences remain part of the person who moves on.
Source details
Poem “Ulysses.”
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“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Meaning & context
The aging speaker refuses to treat reduced time or strength as a reason to stop seeking meaningful work.
Source details
Ulysses, in the closing address to the mariners.
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“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Meaning & context
The closing sequence turns purpose into continuing action: effort, search, discovery, and refusal to surrender.
Source details
Poem “Ulysses,” final line.
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“Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Meaning & context
The invitation joins companionship with renewed ambition, making change a shared undertaking rather than a solitary one.
Source details
Ulysses, in the closing address to the mariners.
