Top 100 Henry Wadsworth Quotes
#1. For they both were solitary,
She on earth and he is heaven.
And he wooed her with caressed,
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine
-Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Jana Oliver
#2. Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending. - HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Henry Cloud
#3. More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses
it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#5. Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
One to the land of promise and of light,
One to the land of darkness and of dreams!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#6. Among the noblest in the land - Though man may count himself the least - That man I honor and revere, Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand, The friend of every friendless beast.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#10. 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
#11. Burn, O evening hearth, and waken Pleasant visions, as of old! Though the house by winds be shaken, Safe I keep this room of gold!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#13. With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under ground.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#14. Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#19. 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
#20. 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!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#22. 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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#28. 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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#29. For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#31. As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#32. So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#36. Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike, Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#37. The mind of the scholar, if you would have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his armor should be somewhat bruised by rude encounters even, than hang forever rusting on the wall.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#39. Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,
When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,
Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,
But never will be sung to us again,
Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest
Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#40. Perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word* Wait!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#41. Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#43. He had mittens, Minjekahwun, Magic mittens made of deer-skin; When upon his hands he wore them, He could smite the rocks asunder, He could grind them into powder.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#46. O summer day beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#47. Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature, That fashions all her works in high relief, And that is Sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth, Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire; Men, women, and all animals that breathe Are statues, and not paintings.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#48. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#50. If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#51. Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#53. Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn; We shudder for a moment, then awake In the broad sunshine of the other life.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#54. 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
#56. But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#65. O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#66. All was ended now, the hope, and the fear and the sorrow,
All the aching of the heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#68. 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!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#70. Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang with many a change, Christmas carols until morn.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#72. Nor deem the irrevocable Past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#73. Love is a bodily shape; and Christian works are no more than animate faith and love, as flowers are the animate springtide.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#76. Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#77. I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady lambent light, are luminous, but not sparkling.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#78. The secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of oblivion. They are out of sight, but without them no superstructure can stand secure.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#79. Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#82. In what a forge and what a heat were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock; 'Tis of the wave and not the rock.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#84. The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm, and self-possessed.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#85. 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
#86. Prayer is innocence's friend; and willingly flieth incessant 'twist the earth and the sky, the carrier-pigeon of heaven.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#87. Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#90. This will be a great day in our history; the date of a New Revolution - quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind which will come soon!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#91. Many people do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#93. The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#94. The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#96. Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,
One touch of fire,
and all the rest is mystery!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#97. Youth, hope, and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#99. How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
