Quotes from Idylls of the King

Alfred Tennyson ·  384 pages

Rating: (8.3K votes)


“Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of: Wherefore, let thy voice,
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“This madness has come on us for our sins.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“While he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,
As though it were the beauty of her soul:
For as the base man, judging of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter--all her bright hair streaming down--
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“...and Gareth bowed himself with all obedience to the King, and wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King



“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“Ah my God, what might I not have made of thy fair world, had I but loved thy highest creature here? It was my duty to have loved the highest: It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“after all had eaten, then Geraint,   For now the wine made summer in his veins,   Let his eye rove in following, or rest   On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work,”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


“I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
"They are broken, they are broken!" for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts—
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he—
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader.”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King



“Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn   To wage my wars, and worship me their King;   The old order changeth, yielding place to new;   And we that fight for our fair father Christ,”
― Alfred Tennyson, quote from Idylls of the King


About the author

Alfred Tennyson
Born place: in Somersby, Lincolnshire, The United Kingdom
Born date August 6, 1809
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Mistborn: The Final Empire


If I could fall in love with a girl, it’d be her. Those ifs are dangerous. You try them on in your head like dresses, so easy to slide in and out of. If I kissed girls, I’d kiss her. If we kissed, it’d go like this. At some point I dropped the if like a slip and just wore the feeling, nothing between it and my skin. When I kiss her. When it happens. All of it took place in my head, in silence, locked tight in skull bone and the frantic synaptic whispers between neurons, no clues popping out except the passive-aggressive haircut, the incriminating poem.

That’s the problem with writers. Too much imagination.

The greater part of me knew it couldn’t be real, but the hopeful part, which is more concentrated and condensed, rich in nine essential delusions, thought: It’s not all in your head.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Black Iris


“Mr. Charnock said: Men that are great in the world are quick in passion, and are not so ready to forgive an injury, or bear with an offender, as one of a meaner rank. It is a want of power over that man’s self that makes him do unbecoming things upon a provocation. A prince that can bridle his passions is a king over himself as well as over his subjects. God is slow to anger because great in power. He has no less power over Himself than over His creatures.”
― Arthur W. Pink, quote from The Attributes of God


“But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn’t understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot—see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter


“Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.”
― Rose Macaulay, quote from The Towers of Trebizond


Interesting books

The Pickwick Papers
(21.1K)
The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
The Cuckoo's Calling
(375.2K)
The Cuckoo's Calling
by Robert Galbraith
The Mill on the Floss
(41.7K)
The Mill on the Flos...
by George Eliot
The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
(71K)
The Road Less Travel...
by M. Scott Peck
Slave to Sensation
(51.1K)
Slave to Sensation
by Nalini Singh
Night Play
(45.9K)
Night Play
by Sherrilyn Kenyon

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.