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Who really said it

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

Written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809–1892 · English Poet Laureate
Verified Free to reuse

Tennyson wrote this exact line in Canto XXVII of ‘In Memoriam A. H. H.’ (1850), his long elegy for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The wording — ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all’ — is genuine and appears verbatim in the published poem.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto XXVII (1850)

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Provenance

The source

Work
In Memoriam A. H. H.
Section
Canto XXVII (final stanza)
First published
1850 (London: Edward Moxon)
Written for
Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833)

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.

The complete closing stanza of Canto XXVII. The famous line is the third of these four; it is almost always quoted on its own.

In Memoriam A. H. H. on Wikisource

How we know

  • The couplet closes Canto XXVII of Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H., first published in 1850.
  • The elegy mourns Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s Cambridge friend, who died suddenly in 1833 at twenty-two.
  • Tennyson coined the modern phrasing, though kindred sentiments appear earlier — e.g. Congreve’s 1700 play The Way of the World.
Public domain

In Memoriam A. H. H. was first published in 1850, long before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff, and Tennyson died in 1892. The poem — and this line — are firmly in the public domain worldwide.

Fact-check

Wait — but there’s a catch

The attribution to Tennyson is correct. What people get wrong is the surrounding folklore — who to credit, and a famous parody often mistaken for the real thing.

Shakespeare / St. Augustine Common web mix-up

The line is sometimes tossed to Shakespeare or an ancient sage online. It is neither — it is Tennyson’s, from In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850).

William Congreve / Mary Wollstonecraft Precursor, not the wording

Kindred sentiments predate Tennyson — Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700): “’tis better to be left than never to have loved,” and Wollstonecraft (1792) on being “disappointed in love, than never to love.” But the exact modern phrasing is Tennyson’s own.

Samuel Butler It’s a parody

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all” is Samuel Butler’s satirical twist — a joke on Tennyson, not the original line. The genuine Tennyson keeps ‘loved’ in both halves.

The line is authentically Tennyson’s — the closing couplet of Canto XXVII of In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850).

Context

Why it mattered

Tennyson began In Memoriam in the raw grief after Arthur Henry Hallam — his closest friend and his sister’s fiancé — died of a brain hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, aged twenty-two. The poem took him roughly seventeen years, moving from despair toward a hard-won faith.

Canto XXVII lands on the line that has since become one of the most quoted consolations in English: the claim that love, even ending in loss, is worth the grief. Published in 1850, the sequence was an immediate success and helped win Tennyson the Poet Laureateship that year.

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

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

In Memoriam A.H.H.en.wikipedia.org

Overview of the elegy, its structure, and the Canto XXVII stanza.
In Memoriam (full text)en.wikisource.org

Public-domain full text of the poem, canto by canto.
Who Said ‘Better to Have Loved and Lost’?interestingliterature.com

Origin, meaning, and earlier precursors (Congreve, Wollstonecraft).
Alfred, Lord Tennysonpoetryfoundation.org

Biography and works of the Victorian Poet Laureate.
Why do we say it?bookbrowse.com

Short history of the expression and its source in In Memoriam.

The true author

About Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1809–1892 · English Poet Laureate

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland for most of Queen Victoria’s reign and the most popular poet of the Victorian era. In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), a sequence of 131 short cantos written over seventeen years, mourns his friend Arthur Henry Hallam and helped secure his appointment as Laureate that same year. He also gave the language “Theirs not to reason why” and “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Canto XXVII,” in In Memoriam A. H. H. (London: Edward Moxon, 1850).

MLA (9th ed.)

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. In Memoriam A. H. H. Edward Moxon, 1850, canto 27.

APA (7th ed.)

Tennyson, A., Lord. (1850). In memoriam A. H. H. Edward Moxon.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/tis-better-to-have-loved-and-lost-than-never-to-have-loved

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