Quotes by Henry Longfellow

• A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
• All things come round to him who will but wait.
• A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
• A thought often makes us hotter than a fire.
• All things must change to something new, to something strange.
• Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
• For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
• Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
• Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
• Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
• Resolve and thou art free.
• Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
• People demand freedom only when they have no power.
• Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
• Something attempted, something done, Has earned a nights repose.
• Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.
• Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.
• Youth comes but once in a lifetime.
• Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man's enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
• Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
• When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
• We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
• Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.
• Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
• They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.
• Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
• There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.
• That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
• There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
• The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.
• The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.
• The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
• The rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished gain.
• The nearer the dawn the darker the night.
• The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
• The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.
• The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
• The human voice is the organ of the soul.
• The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.
• The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
• The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
• There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
• Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
• In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
• Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
• Into each life some rain must fall.
• It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
• It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
• It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.
• It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
• Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
• Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.
• If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
• Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
• Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
• Love gives itself; it is not bought.
• Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
• Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
• Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
• 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.
• Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
• Music is the universal language of mankind.
• Evil is only good perverted.
• Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
• Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
• Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
• Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
• As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.
• Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
• In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
• For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.
• If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.
• Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think.
• The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless; love is eternal.
• He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
• Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.
• However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
• I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
• If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
• Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.