Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes (202 quotes, page 2)

“The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Lost Youth, refrain (1858), quoting Olaus Sirma
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Youth , Boy

“When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There Was a Little Girl http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1345.html
Often misquoted as "When she was good/She was very, very good".
Context: There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

“Youth comes but once in a lifetime”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Youth

“Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish

Source: The Courtship of Miles Standish

Friendship

“For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Line 7.
Source: Hiawatha: The Story and Song

Art , Heart

“There's nothing in this world so sweet as love, and next to love the sweetest thing is hate.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love , Hate , World

“Where'er a noble deed is wrought,
Where'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts in glad surprise
To higher levels rise.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Santa Filomena

Santa Filomena.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“Pandora, waking: …
I am alone. These faces in the mirrors
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself;
They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me,
Save the all-seeing Gods…
She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest
and fills the room. Pandora falls senseless on
the floor. Storm without.

Chorus of Dreams from the Gate of Horn: …
Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter
Shall afflict and vex mankind,
All into the air have risen
From the chambers of their prison;
Only Hope remains behind.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

God , Pain , Dreams , Hope

“Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Flowers

Flowers, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Star , Flowers

“What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation

Sadness , Distant

“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

The Golden Legend http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10490/10490-h/10490-h.htm, Pt. IV, The Cloisters (1872).

Time , Heart

“God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish

Part IV.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

God

“All things come round to him who will but wait.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Student's Tale.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Waiting

“I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hymn to the Night, st. 1 (1839).

Light , Night

“Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,—
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Light of Stars

The Light of Stars, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World , Fear , Strong , Suffering

“O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Goblet of Life, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Lie , Sadness , Affliction , Suffering

“Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Village Blacksmith

St. 1.
The Village Blacksmith (1842)

Tree , Strong

“The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, st. 2 (1858).

Death , Sleep , Tree

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Prelude.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Sadness

“But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language,
Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival,
Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter,
Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish

Pt. III, The Lover's Errand.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

Smile , Laughter , Forgetting

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Inferno, canto v, line 121.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Time , Happiness

“Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Table-Talk (1857)

People , Beauty , Idea , Bird

“Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Hyperion

Motto, Hyperion, book i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Hermes:
Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

God

“The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation

Dead

“She floats upon the river of his thoughts.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Spanish Student http://www.readbookonline.net/title/3208/, Act II, sc. iii (1843).

“It is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish

Part VI.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

Fate , Question , Silence , Waiting

“The scholar and the world! The endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 23.
Morituri Salutamus http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/19229 (1875)

Love , Life , Pain , Books

“Footprints, that perhaps another,
Travelling o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

St. 8.
A Psalm of Life (1839)

Life , Travel , Heart

“If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me,
Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me?
If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish

Pt. III, The Lover's Errand.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

Wedding

“Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought;
This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
With dreams and visions, was the first to teach.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Three Silences of Molinos http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3051/12504/ (1878).

Dreams , Silence

“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.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation

Resignation, st. 5.

Life , Death

“Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 7.
The Day is Done (1845)

Tear , Reading , Heart , Summer

“Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth;
Greater than anger is love that subdueth.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

The Nun of Nidaros, st. 9.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Love , Truth , Light , Anger

“No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Endymion, st. 8 (1842).

Fate , Heart

“And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Arrow and the Song

The Arrow and the Song, st. 3.

Heart

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Landlord's Tale: Paul Revere's Ride, st. 1.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Children

“Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

St. 6.
A Psalm of Life (1839)

God , Past , Future , Heart

“Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Arsenal at Springfield.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World , Error , Wealth

“Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Builders

The Builders, st. 2 (1849).

Support

“The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Herons of Elmwood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“This is the place. Stand still, my steed,—
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy past
The forms that once have been.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Gleam of Sunshine, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Past

“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Arrow and the Song

The Arrow and the Song, st. 1 (1845).

“Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died,
In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,
Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,
And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lady Wentworth.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Home , Sea

“Look, then, into thine heart, and write!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Voices of the Night http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/Chap1.html, Prelude, st. 19 (1839).

Heart

“The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, — the taste and stain from the lees of the vat.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Table-Talk (1857)

Wine , Heart

“Let him not boast who puts his armor on
As he who puts it off, the battle done.
Study yourselves; and most of all note well
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

St. 11.
Morituri Salutamus http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/19229 (1875)

Nature , Study

“What land is this? Yon pretty town
Is Delft, with all its wares displayed:
The pride, the market-place, the crown
And centre of the Potter's trade.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, line 66; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 187.