Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quotes:

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  • 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.

  • The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • Music is the universal language of mankind.

  • The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

  • Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

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

  • 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.

  • Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.

  • Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.

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

  • I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.

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

  • People demand freedom only when they have no power.

  • The nearer the dawn the darker the night.

  • Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

  • Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

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

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

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

  • The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

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

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

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

  • The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

  • Love gives itself; it is not bought.

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

  • All things come round to him who will but wait.

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

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

  • Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.

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

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

  • 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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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."

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

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

  • Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscapeLay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood."

  • Poor, deluded Shawondasee! 'T was no woman that you gazed at, 'T was no maiden that you sighed for, 'T was the prairie dandelion That through all the dreamy Summer You had gazed at with such longing, You had sighed for with such passion, And had puffed away forever, Blown into the air with sighing. Ah! deluded Shawondasee!"

  • Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts."

  • Its reward is in the doing,And the rapture of pursuingIs the prize"

  • At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental.

  • Every man has a paradise around him till he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden.

  • Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught In schools, some graduate of the field or street, Who shall become a master of art, An admiral sailing the high seas of thought Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

  • A coquette is a young lady of more beauty than sense, more accomplishments than learning, more charms not person than graces of mind, more admirers than friends, mole fools than wise men for attendants.

  • Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.

  • With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under ground.

  • At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast.

  • In the long run men hit only what they aim at.

  • The prayer of Ajax was for light.

  • 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.

  • Like black hulks the shadows of the great trees ride at anchor on the billowy sea of grass.

  • .... Anon from the castle walls The 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 shouts ascend on high .....'' Long live Scanderbeg.

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

  • As great Pythagoras of yore, Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung Vibrant on every iron tongue, The secret of the sounding wire. And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

  • Sweet April! many a thought Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed; Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought, Life's golden fruit is shed.

  • 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.

  • Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame.

  • Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o'er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee: Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.

  • I have a passion for ballad. . . . They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of literature,--in the genial Summertime.

  • I know not how it is, but during a voyage I collect books as a ship does barnacles.

  • 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.

  • The hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain.

  • But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise.

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

  • To-morrow! the mysterious, unknown guest, Who cries to me: "Remember Barmecide, And tremble to be happy with the rest." And I make answer: "I am satisfied; I dare not ask; I know not what is best; God hath already said what shall betide.

  • The picture that approaches sculpture nearest Is the best picture.

  • The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, the taste and stain from the lees of the vat.

  • When you ask one friend to dine, Give him your best wine! When you ask two, The second best will do!

  • Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

  • Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations.

  • Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

  • If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.

  • I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

  • It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much.

  • Bell, thou soundest merrily, When the bridal party To the church doth hie! Bell, thou soundest solemnly, When, on Sabbath morning, Fields deserted lie!

  • The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.

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

  • Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.

  • The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers.

  • I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

  • 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.

  • Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.

  • Some poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud.

  • Sweet is the air with the budding haws, and the valley stretching for miles below Is white with blossoming cherry-trees, as if just covered with lighted snow.

  • Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.

  • Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang with many a change, Christmas carols until morn.

  • Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God.

  • Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

  • Beautiful in form and feature, lovely as the day, can there be so fair a creature formed of common clay?

  • Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.

  • 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.

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

  • 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 rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.

  • It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.

  • As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.

  • Tis always morning somewhere.

  • The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

  • By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis, Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

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

  • A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

  • Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless, yet unclouded, day, descending upon earth with dews and shadows and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites today with yesterday!

  • The country is lyric, the town dramatic. When mingled, they make the most perfect musical drama.

  • I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.

  • Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

  • Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail.

  • O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?

  • Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.

  • The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.

  • Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

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