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

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

— 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

Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The secret anniversaries of the heart.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Resolve and thou art free.

— 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

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

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

— 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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One half the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— 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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— 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

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!

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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

Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is not grief that does not speak.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— 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

No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— 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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love gives itself; it is not bought.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— 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

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

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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

All things come round to him who will but wait.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

— 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 somebody.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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 rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To be left alone, and face to face with my own crime, had been just retribution.

— 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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You know I say just what I think, and nothing more and less. I cannot say one thing and mean another.

— 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

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

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh, fear not in a world like this, and thou shalt know erelong, know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined way, but to act that each tomorrow may find us further than today.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In ourselves are triumph and defeat.

— 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

The human voice is the organ of the soul.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

The world loves a spice of wickedness.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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