Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

The writer of this legend then recordsIts ghostly application in these words:The image is the Adversary old,Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;Our lusts and passions are the downward stairThat leads the soul from a diviner air;The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;The knights and ladies all whose flesh and boneBy avarice have been hardened into stone;The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelfTempts from his books and from his nobler self.The scholar and the world! The endless strife,The discord in the harmonies of life!The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books;The market-place, the eager love of gain,Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the mystery of the unknownThat fascinates us; we are children stillWayward and wistful; with one hand we clingTo the familiar things we call our own,And with the other, resolute of will,Grope in the dark for what the day will bring

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between 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.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, our faith triumphant o’er our fears, are all with thee – are all with thee!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O, never from the memory of my heartYour dear, paternal image shall depart,Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,Taught me how mortals are immortalized;How grateful am I for that patient careAll my life long my language shall declare.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The purpose of that apple tree is to grow a little new wood each year. That is what I plan to do.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

His imagination seemed still to exhaust itself in running, before it tried to leap the ditch. While he mused, the fire burned in other brains. Other hands wrote the books he dreamed about. He freely used his good ideas in conversation, and in letters; and they were straightway wrought into the texture of other men's books, and so lost to him for ever.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sadly as some old mediaeval knightGazed at the arms he could no longer wield,The sword two-handed and the shining shieldSuspended in the hall, and full in sight,While secret longings for the lost delightOf tourney or adventure in the fieldCame over him, and tears but half concealedTrembled and fell upon his beard of white,So I behold these books upon their shelf,My ornaments and arms of other days;Not wholly useless, though no longer used,For they remind me of my other self,Younger and stronger, and the pleasant waysIn which I walked, now clouded and confused.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How Beautiful is the rain!After the dust and heat,In the broad and fiery street,In the narrow lane,How beautiful is the rain!How it clatters along the roofs,Like the tramp of hoofs!How it gushes and struggles outFrom the throat of the overflowing spout!Across the window-paneIt pours and pours;And swift and wide,With a muddy tide,Like a river down the gutter roarsThe rain, the welcome rain!-Rain in Summer

~ 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

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

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is too late! Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at eighty; SophoclesWrote his grand Oedipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verse from his compeers,When each had numbered more than fourscore years,And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,Had but begun his Characters of Men.Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,Completed Faust when eighty years were past,These are indeed exceptions; but they showHow far the gulf-stream of our youth may flowInto the arctic regions of our lives.Where little else than life itself survives.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was an old belief that in the embersOf all things their primordial form exists, And cunning alchemistsCould re-create the rose with all its membersFrom its own ashes, but without the bloom, Without the lost perfume Ah me! what wonder-working, occult scienceCan from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore?What craft of alchemy can bid defianceTo time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One if by land, two if by sea.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeon,In 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 the dust away!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery, we build where monsters used to hide themselves.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The nearer the dawnthe darker the night.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And oft the blessed time foretellsWhen all men shall be free;And musical, as silver bells,Their falling chains shall be.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The student has his Rome, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done.

~ 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

Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things must change to something new to something strange.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thy fate is the common fate of all Into each life some rain must fall Some days must be dark and dreary.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things come round to him who will but wait.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done.

~ 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