Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Time Quotes

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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
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
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
The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O hemlock-tree! how faithful are thy branches! Green not alone in summer time, But in the winter's frost and rime! O hemlock-tree! O hemlock-tree! how faithful are thy branches!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Beneath me flows the Rhine, and like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of the Past.

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

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
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
Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear,—
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,—
"Forever — never!
Never — forever!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries-these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of Time, not Time itself. Time is the Life of the Soul.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A handful of red sand from the hot clime
Of Arab deserts brought,
Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, or frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Time, like a preacher in the days of the Puritans, turned the hour-glass on his high pulpit, the church belfry.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow