Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

488 Sourced Quotes

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
Beautiful in form and feature, lovely as the day, can there be so fair a creature formed of common clay?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I know not how it is, but during a voyage I collect books as a ship does barnacles.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! The frontier town and citadel of night!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
The swallow is come! The swallow is come! O, fair are the seasons, and light Are the days that she brings, With her dusky wings, And her bosom snowy white!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There rises the moon, broad and tranquil, through the branches of a walnut tree on a hill opposite. I apostrophize it in the words of Faust; "O gentle moon, that lookest for the last time upon my agonies!" --or something to that effect.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Take them, O Death! and bear away Whatever thou canst call thine own! Thine image, stamped upon this clay, Doth give thee that, but that alone!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Perhaps the chief cause which has retarded the progress of poetry in America, is the want of that exclusive cultivation, which so noble a branch of literature would seem to require. Few here think of relying upon the exertion of poetic talent for a livelihood, and of making literature the profession of life. The bar or the pulpit claims the greater part of the scholar's existence, and poetry is made its pastime.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul. The intellect of man is enthroned visibly on his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance, but the soul, the soul reveals itself in the voice only.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood in his brazen mail.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Nature paints not; In oils, but frescoes the great dome of heaven; With sunsets, and the lovely forms of clouds; And flying vapors.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Dreams or illusions, call them what you will, they lift us from the commonplace of life to better things.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
God's voice was not in the earthquake, Not in the fire, nor the storm, but it was in the whispering breezes.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How in the turmoil of life can love stand,
Where there is not one heart, and one mouth and one hand.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang with many a change, Christmas carols until morn.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow