Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

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.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- 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

Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man's enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.

- 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

As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.

- 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

It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless; love is eternal.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Resolve and thou art free.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

- 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

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

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

The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.

- 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

The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

- 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

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

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.

- 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

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

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

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

If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.

- 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

Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.

- 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

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

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Something attempted, something done, Has earned a nights repose.

- 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

Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things come round to him who will but wait.

- 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

It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

- 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

For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music is the universal language of mankind.

- 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

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The nearer the dawn the darker the night.

- 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

Evil is only good perverted.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love gives itself; it is not bought.

- 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

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

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

- 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

They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.

- 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

A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Into each life some rain must fall.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The human voice is the organ of the soul.

- 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

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow