![The Talking Oak (Tennyson)', 1857, (circa 1915). From International Art: Past and Present by Alfred Yockney. [Virtue & Company, London, circa 1915]. Artist William Maw Egley. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)](https://cdn.tatlerasia.com/tatlerasia/i/2026/08/03173102-gettyimages-959874828_600x750.jpg)
Cover A painting inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Talking Oak’, a glimpse into the imaginative world of the poet behind some of English literature’s most enduring phrases (Photo: Print Collector/Getty Images)
A painting inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Talking Oak’, a glimpse into the imaginative world of the poet behind some of English literature’s most enduring phrases (Photo: Print Collector/Getty Images)
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‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’—one of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s most enduring quotes. On his 217th birthday, we trace the famous Tennyson phrases we still use today
Some lines become so familiar that their origins disappear. “’Tis better to have loved and lost” can sound like an old proverb; “ring out the old, ring in the new” is like a phrase that has always existed. Both, however, came from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Britain’s longest-serving poet laureate, who held the post for 42 years until he died in 1892. Born on August 6, 1809, Tennyson turned personal grief, religious uncertainty and the upheavals of Victorian Britain into poetry with a remarkable ear for rhythm and memorable phrasing. Many of his lines travelled far beyond the poems that contained them, becoming part of the language itself.
Who was Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
Above Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote immortal lines about love, loss and nature (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote immortal lines about love, loss and nature (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson became one of the most quoted writers in the English language, ranking alongside Shakespeare in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Raised in Somersby, Lincolnshire, amid a troubled family life, he developed a poetic style capable of giving precise form to emotions and ideas that were difficult to articulate: grief, faith, doubt, duty and the fear of a changing world.
His major works, including In Memoriam A.H.H., Ulysses, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Idylls of the King, repeatedly turned those concerns into compact, highly rhythmic lines. Tennyson’s position as poet laureate also gave his work an unusually wide public reach, while newspapers and anthologies helped circulate his most memorable phrases well beyond the literary circles in which they first appeared.
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His gift was not simply for expressing big ideas, but for giving them a form that people could remember, repeat and eventually detach from their original context. The phrases that follow show just how far that gift travelled beyond his poems.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’
Above From ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’, this line, inspired by grief, became every heartbreak’s favourite consolation (Photo: Leopold Classic Library)
From ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’, this line, inspired by grief, became every heartbreak’s favourite consolation (Photo: Leopold Classic Library)
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Lord Tennyson wrote this in In Memoriam A.H.H., his 1850 elegy for his closest friend, Arthur Hallam, who died suddenly at 22. It was never meant as break-up advice—it was a meditation on loving someone you have lost forever. Today, though, it is the line reached for after any romantic ending, its balanced structure and simple words making it as quotable now as it was 176 years ago.
‘Ring out the old, ring in the new’
Also from In Memoriam, this was originally Lord Tennyson’s plea for false pride, sickness, envy and strife to die with the old year, making way for truth, peace and love to take their place. It was a New Year’s chime in the most literal sense, written to be read alongside church bells ringing out the calendar’s turn. That same yearning for a clean slate is why it has since become the unofficial motto of every New Year’s Eve countdown and corporate rebrand, a tidy line for turning the page on anything at all.
‘Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers’
Above The line in ‘Locksley Hall’ distinguishes quick facts from hard-won understanding (Photo: Legare Street Press)
The line in ‘Locksley Hall’ distinguishes quick facts from hard-won understanding (Photo: Legare Street Press)
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From Locksley Hall (1842), this draws a firm line between information and insight: facts can be gathered quickly, but the judgement to use them well only comes slowly, through lived experience. Lord Tennyson set it against a backdrop of rapid Victorian scientific progress, questioning whether accumulating knowledge alone could make society any wiser. That distinction still lands today, which is why the line endures in classrooms, commencement speeches and wherever experience is prized over mere data.
‘To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’
Above The resilience mantra in ‘Ulysses’ was inscribed on the wall of the London Olympic Village (Photo: Resilience Press)
The resilience mantra in ‘Ulysses’ was inscribed on the wall of the London Olympic Village (Photo: Resilience Press)
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The closing line of Ulysses (1842), written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, has Tennyson’s mythical hero—ageing, restless, unwilling to fade quietly—refuse to bow to old age or grief and resolve to keep exploring regardless. Its stacked, driving monosyllabic verbs, carried on strict iambic pentameter, make it one of English literature’s most quoted calls to perseverance. Its staying power was proven in 2012, when it was installed on a wall of the London Olympic Village, greeting athletes from around the world before they competed.
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‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die’
From The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854), this honoured the 600 cavalrymen who rode into a fatal trap at Balaclava after a bungled command—Lord Tennyson wrote the entire poem in one sitting, straight after reading the newspaper report of the battle. It was intended as a tribute to disciplined bravery under tragic circumstances, not cynicism. Yet today, often slightly misquoted as “mine is not to reason why”, it is invoked wryly whenever someone must carry out an order they privately think is nonsense, turning up everywhere from office memos to war films and heavy metal lyrics.
‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’
Above The ruthless-nature metaphor from ‘In Memoriam’ was written nine years before Darwin’s theory of evolution (Photo: W W Norton & Co Inc)
The ruthless-nature metaphor from ‘In Memoriam’ was written nine years before Darwin’s theory of evolution (Photo: W W Norton & Co Inc)
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Also from In Memoriam, this phrase captured the Victorian shock at fossil evidence of extinction—nine years before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Lord Tennyson was wrestling with whether a loving God could preside over such brutality, not describing office politics. But the phrase outlived that theological crisis to become the default shorthand for cutthroat competition, whether in business, sport or the animal kingdom itself.
‘In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love’
Written in Locksley Hall, this observed how the seasonal renewal of nature—new growth, longer days, warmer air—seems to stir an involuntary, instinctual romantic restlessness in the young. Tennyson meant it half wryly, as part of a longer meditation on youth and disillusionment, not as a wholehearted celebration. Still, stripped of that context, it has survived as a light, knowing shorthand for spring flirtations and sudden crushes, deployed with a wink more than 180 years after it was written.
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After more than a decade in lifestyle media, Clifford has mastered the art of writing seriously about things that are fun—and writing fun things about people who take themselves very seriously. At Tatler Asia, he helped steer its flagship lists, Tatler’s Most Influential and Asia’s Most Stylish. And today, he leads T-Labs, Tatler Asia’s content innovation hub, where he continues the noble pursuit of lifestyle storytelling, spinning stories on wealth, entertainment, necessary style, Hallyu, Hollywood, beauty and more for audiences across Asia.
