Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All things come round to him who will but wait.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And yet not turn your back upon the world.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Evil is only good perverted.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Into each life some rain must fall.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
People demand freedom only when they have no power.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Resolve and thou art free.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sail on ship of state, sail on, I union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging on thy fate!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sleep... Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The foods that prolong life and increase purity, vigour, health, cheerfulness, and happiness are those that are delicious, soothing, substantial and agreeable... Foods that are bitter, sour, salt, over-hot, pungent, dry and burning produce unhappiness, repentance and disease.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The grave is but a covered bridge Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The morning pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The nearer the dawn the darker the night.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love - the first fluttering of its siken wings.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To be left alone, and face to face with my own crime, had been just retribution.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Heart within and God overhead.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man's enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Write on your doors the saying wise and old. Be bold! and everywhere - Be bold; Be not too bold! Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less sustaineth him and the steadiness of his mind beareth him out.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You know I say just what I think, and nothing more and less. I cannot say one thing and mean another.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good,
She was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not obtained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Hiawatha prayed
and fasted in the forest,
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
Not for triumphs in the battle,
And renown among the warriors,
But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The shades of night were falling fast,
As though an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah, how skilful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love's command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love's behest
Far excelleth all the rest!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let us, then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted,
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning
Back to their springs, like the rain shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgement of others.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Music is the universal language of mankind.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All things must change to something new, to something strange.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow