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Were a star quenched on high,For ages would its light,Still travelling downward from the sky,Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies,For years beyond our ken,The light he leaves behind him liesUpon the paths of men.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Action(s)
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Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Age
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Age is opportunity no less,
than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled by the stars invisible by the day.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus
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I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Ambition
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Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Architecture
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Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, are merely shadows cast by outward things on stone or canvas, having in themselves no separate existence. Architecture, existing in itself, and not in seeming a something it is not, surpasses them as substance shadow.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Art
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Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Beginnings
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Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Bravery
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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
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Change
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All things must change to something new, to something strange.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Character
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In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Children
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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
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A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard wordsbruise the heart of a child.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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.
The story goes that Longfellow denied writing this, but according to The Great American Baby Almanac he finally admitted writing it saying When I recall my juvenile poems and prose sketches, I wish that they were forgotten entirely. They however cling to one's skirt with a terrible grasp.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Control
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The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Conversation
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Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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He speaketh not; and yet there lies
A conversation in his eyes.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Hanging of the Crane
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Criticism
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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
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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
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The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Danger
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Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Death
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When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Difficulty
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The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment. There is no fate in the world so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Dreams
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One half the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Effort
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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
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Evil
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The world loves a spice of wickedness.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Failure
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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
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However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Fame
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Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Fate & Destiny
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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
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Friends
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I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, who has sight so keen and strong That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroken; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Future, The
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Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined way, but to act that each tomorrow may find us further than today.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Genius
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All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Grief, Grieving
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Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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There is not grief that does not speak.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Health
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Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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History
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That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Humanity
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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, The Song of Hiawatha
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Illusion
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Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Journeys
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The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Judging, Judgment
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We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Language
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No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Leadership
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Some men must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Learning
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The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Life
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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.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn 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, A Psalm of Life, 1839
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Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Life is real! Life is earnest! And death is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Literary
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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, Excelsior
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Love
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It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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It is a beautiful trait in the lovers character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Love gives itself; it is not bought.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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!
published in The Seaside and the Fireside
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Building of the Ship
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Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Manners
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Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Memory
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Silently, one by one,in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Mistakes
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Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Morals
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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
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Nature
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The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature --were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Night, Nighttime
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And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares, that infest the day, shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, and as silently steal away.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Passion
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It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Patience
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Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait -- not in listless idleness but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavors, always willing and fulfilling and accomplishing his task, that when the occasion comes he may be equal to the occasion.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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All things come round to him who will but wait.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Peace
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I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat. Of peace on earth goodwill to men.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Persistence
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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
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Present, the
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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
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Pride
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Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where
Oxford Book of American Verse, The. F. O. Matthiessen, ed. (1950) Oxford University Press.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (l. 45
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Progress
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We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Prophecy
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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
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Reading
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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
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Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings --as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Reason
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It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Regret & Remorse
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To be left alone, and face to face with my own crime, had been just retribution.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Remembrance
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A feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Sacrifice
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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
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Sadness
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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
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Secrets
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The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Self Respect
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He that respects himself is safe from others; He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Service
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Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Simplicity
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Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Sincerity
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You know I say just what I think, and nothing more and less. I cannot say one thing and mean another.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Singing
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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, Hyperion, Book III, Chapter III. Interlachen
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Solitude
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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
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Success & Failure
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The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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
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Suffering
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Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Sunset
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Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon
Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape;
Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest
Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (pt. II, sec. II)
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Thought
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Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Time
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Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Vanity
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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
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Victory
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In ourselves are triumph and defeat.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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War
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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
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Youth
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Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year's nest!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Books by and about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
