Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

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Southward with fleet of ice Sailed the corsair Death; Wild and fast blew the blast, And the east-wind was his breath.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This song of mine
Is a song of the vine
To be sung by the glowing embers
Of wayside inns,
When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers. and
For the richest and best
Is the wind of the West
That grows by the Beautiful River;
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room
With a bension on the giver. and
When you ask one friend to dine,
Give hime your best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Well I know the secret places, And the nests in hedge and tree; At what doors are friendly faces, In what hearts are thoughts of me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater To raise the dead to life than to create Phantoms that seem to live.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old,
their beards of icicles and snow.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As artist or as artisan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart, or please, Or satisfy our nobler needs, In Nature's footprints, light and fleet, As he who sets his willing feet And follows fearless where she leads.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle; but the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means, and struggles nobly with his foe to achieve great deeds.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
The history of the past is a mere puppet-show. A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again. You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out, and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again. And it is all over.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Showed the broad, white road in heaven, Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, Running straight across the heavens, Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let us, then, be what we are; speak what we think; and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the starless sky of midnight!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow