Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As Unto the bow the the cord is ,So unto the man is woman;Though she bends him, she obeys him,Though she draws him , yet she follows:Useless each without the other.

~ 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

I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;Thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ah, Nothing is too late, till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.

~ 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

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 are, to dust thou returnest,Was not spoken of the soul.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained in sudden flight but, they while their companions slept, they were toiling upwards in the night.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining

~ 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.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,But never will be sung to us again,Is they remembrance. Now the hour of restHath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,And our hearts, though stout and brave,Still, like muffled drums, are beatingFuneral marches to the grave.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music is the universal language of mankind.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Resolve, and thou art free.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Unasked, Unsought, Love gives itself but is not bought

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Children's HourBetween the dark and the daylight,When the night is beginning to lower,Comes a pause in the day's occupations,That is known as the Children's Hour.I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet,The sound of a door that is opened,And voices soft and sweet.From my study I see in the lamplight,Descending the broad hall stair,Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,And Edith with golden hair.A whisper, and then a silence:Yet I know by their merry eyesThey are plotting and planning togetherTo take me by surprise.A sudden rush from the stairway,A sudden raid from the hall!By three doors left unguardedThey enter my castle wall!They climb up into my turretO'er the arms and back of my chair;If I try to escape, they surround me;They seem to be everywhere.They almost devour me with kisses,Their arms about me entwine,Till I think of the Bishop of BingenIn his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,Because you have scaled the wall,Such an old mustache as I amIs not a match for you all!I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeonIn the round-tower of my heart.And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,And moulder in dust away!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ye are better than all the balladsThat ever were sung or said;For ye are living poems,And all the rest are dead.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o'er life's solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.

~ 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

Straight between them ran the pathway,Never grew the grass upon it

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

~ 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

Awake! arise! the hour is late! Angels are knocking at thy door!They are in haste and cannot wait, And once departed come no more.Awake! arise! the athlete's arm Loses its strength by too much rest;The fallow land, the untilled farm Produces only weeds at best.

~ 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

Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!The frontier town and citadel of night!The watershed of Time, from which the streamsOf Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,One to the land of promise and of light,One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Anon from the castle wallsThe crescent banner falls,And the crowd beholds instead,Like a portent in the sky,Iskander's banner fly,The Black Eagle with double head;And a shout ascends on high,For men's souls are tired of the Turks,And their wicked ways and works,That have made of Ak-HissarA city of the plague;And the loud, exultant cryThat echoes wide and farIs: Long live Scanderbeg!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Life is real! Life is earnest!And the grave is not its goal;Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,Was not spoken of the soul.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,And yonder gilded vane,Immovable for three days past,Points to the misty main,It drives me in upon myselfAnd to the fireside gleams,To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,And still more pleasant dreams,I read whatever bards have sungOf lands beyond the sea,And the bright days when I was youngCome thronging back to me.In fancy I can hear againThe Alpine torrent's roar,The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,The sea at Elsinore.I see the convent's gleaming wallRise from its groves of pine,And towers of old cathedrals tall,And castles by the Rhine.I journey on by park and spire,Beneath centennial trees,Through fields with poppies all on fire,And gleams of distant seas.I fear no more the dust and heat,No more I feel fatigue,While journeying with another's feetO'er many a lengthening league.Let others traverse sea and land,And toil through various climes,I turn the world round with my handReading these poets' rhymes.From them I learn whatever liesBeneath each changing zone,And see, when looking with their eyes,Better than with mine own.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful soundSeems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thoughtAs Hermes with his lyre in sleep profoundThe hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;For I am weary, and am overwroughtWith too much toil, with too much care distraught,And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,O peaceful Sleep! until from pain releasedI breathe again uninterrupted breath!Ah, with what subtile meaning did the GreekCall thee the lesser mystery at the feastWhereof the greater mystery is death!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day,Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,and silently steal away.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A torn jacket is soon mended, but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The holiest of all holidays are thoseKept by ourselves in silence and apart,The secret anniversaries of the heart.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,We sailed for the Hesperides,The land where golden apples grow;But that, ah! that was long ago.How far, since then, the ocean streamsHave swept us from that land of dreams,That land of fiction and of truth,The lost Atlantis of our youth!Whither, ah, whither? Are not theseThe tempest-haunted Orcades,Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!Here in thy harbors for a whileWe lower our sails; a while we restFrom the unending, endless quest.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow