Quotes by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

"Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on affection
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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on age and aging   

"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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on age and aging
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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on age and aging   

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"Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on age and aging   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on difficulties   

"Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on difficulties
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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on difficulties
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"Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on difficulties
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"One half the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on dream   

"Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on endurance
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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on failure   

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on failure
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"Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on fame   

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on fame   

"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!"

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on fate
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"The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on firmness
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"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on forgiveness
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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on friends and friendship
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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!"

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on friends and friendship   

"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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on genius   

"Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on achievement
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"Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on ambition
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"Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on grief
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"There is not grief that does not speak."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on grief
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"Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on health   

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on illusion
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"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on judgment and judges
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"No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on language   

"Some men must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on leadership   

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on life   

"Life is real! Life is earnest! And death is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on life   

"The secret anniversaries of the heart."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on anniversaries   

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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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on architecture   

"It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on love
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"It is a beautiful trait in the lovers character, that they think no evil of the object loved."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on love
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"Love gives itself; it is not bought."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on love
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"Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on mistakes   

"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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on morality   

"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."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on nature