Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

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The existing universe is bounded in none of its dimensions; for then it must have an outside.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A young critic is like a boy with a gun; he fires at every living thing he sees. He thinks only of his own skill, not of the pain he is giving.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Magnificent Autumn ! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds. He comes not like a hermit, clad in gray. But he comes like a warrior, with the stain of blood upon his brazen mail. His crimson scarf is rent. His scarlet banner drips with gore. His step is like a flail upon the threshing floor.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O lovely river of Yvette!
O darling river! like a bride,
Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette
Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide.
O lovely river Yvette!
O darling stream! on balanced wings
The wood-birds sang the chansonnette
That here a wandering poet sings.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I promise myself great pleasure from my visit to England. You know I am to stay with Dickens while in London; and beside his own very agreeable society, I shall enjoy that of the most noted literary men of the day, which will be a great gratification to me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor.

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

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
Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought - the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Universe as an immeasurable wheel Turning for evermore In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
I saw the long line of the vacant shore, The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand, And the brown rocks left bare on every hand, As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion, there are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
O gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thinking the deed, and not the creed, Would help us in our utmost need.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Mormons make the marriage ring, like the ring of Saturn, fluid, not solid, and keep it in its place by numerous satellites.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The poor too often turn away unheard, From hearts that shut against them with a sound That will be heard in heaven.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Down sank the great red sun, and in golden glimmering vapours Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from Sinai.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I, Born of Ixion and the cloud's embrace: With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly, A steed Thessalian with a human face.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Time rides with the old
At a great pace. As travellers on swift steeds
See the near landscape fly and flow behind them,
While the remoter fields and dim horizons
Go with them, and seem wheeling round to meet them,
So in old age things near us slip away,
And distant things go with us.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And the wind plays on those great sonorous harps, the shrouds and masts of ships.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Work is my recreation,
The play of faculty; a delight like that
Which a bird feels in flying, or a fish
In darting through the water,--Nothing more.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Torrent of light and river of air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen,
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The twilight is sad and cloudy, The wind blows wild and free, And like the wings of sea-birds Flash the white caps of the sea.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden want o'er the landscape; Trinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow