Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
Poet & Educator
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.
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.
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
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.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
Into each life some rain must fall.
Music is the universal language of mankind.
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
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.
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.
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.
Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
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.
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.
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
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.
Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless; love is eternal.
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
The nearer the dawn the darker the night.
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
All things must change to something new, to something strange.
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.
If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
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.
Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.
Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
The human voice is the organ of the soul.
The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.
Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
Something attempted, something done, Has earned a nights repose.
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.
Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man's enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
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.
The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.
It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
Resolve and thou art free.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
People demand freedom only when they have no power.
The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.
Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.
It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
Evil is only good perverted.
Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.