Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies.

It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood.

Tomorrow is the mysterious, unknown guest.

People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so when a little in love.

An angel visited the green earth, and took a flower away.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Silence is a great peacemaker.

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!

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.

The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark

Oh, what a glory doth this world put on, for him who with a fervent heart goes forth under the bright and glorious sky, and looks on duties well performed, and days well spent.

The day is dark and cold and dreary; it rains, and the wind is never weary.

No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving.

The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature ; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.

He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.

Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours.

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer.... Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.

Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs.

The atmosphere breathes rest and comfort, and the many chambers seem full of welcomes.

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

All things come round to him who will but wait.

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

Every human heart is human.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

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.

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

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

Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations.

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

Our hearts are lamps for ever burning.

A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely.

Three silences there are: the first of speech, the second of desire, the third of thought.

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.

Ah, yes, the sea is still and deep, All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o'er, A plunge, a bubble, and no more.

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.

Time is the life of the soul.

There is no light in earth or heaven but the cold light of stars; and the first watch of night is given to the red planet Mars.

Ah, the souls of those that die Are but sunbeams lifted higher.

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

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.

The hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain.

The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.

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!

Fame grows like a tree if it have the principle of growth in it; the accumulated dews of ages freshen its leaves.

There is no death! What seems so is transition; this life of mortal breath is but a suburb of the life elysian, whose portal we call Death.

Nothing that is can pause or stay; / The moon will wax, the moon will wane, / The mist and cloud will turn to rain, / The rain to mist and cloud again, / Tomorrow be today.

Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again.

It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves.

The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.