It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Integrity, Reason, Doing, Time
Every man has a paradise around him till he sins and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and with the innocent eyes of a child looks into his lost paradise again—into the broad gates and rural solitudes of nature.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Paradise
The joy of meeting, not unmixed with pain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Meeting
Some must follow and some command, though all are born of clay.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Weather, Rain
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.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Morality, Morals
Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Beginning, Ending, Beginnings, Perseverance, Endurance, Resolve
He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Sympathy
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
Topics: Wilderness
My soul is full of longing For the secret of the Sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Water
The human voice is the organ of the soul.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Midnight the outpost of advancing day; the frontier town and citadel of night; the water-shed of time, from which the streams of yesterday and tomorrow take their way, one to the land of promise and of light—one to the land of darkness and of dreams.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature,—were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Nature
Something the heart must have to cherish; must love, and joy, and sorrow learn: something with passion clasp, or perish, and in itself to ashes burn.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Heart
But the nearer the dawn the darker the night, And by going wrong all things come right; Things have been mended that were worse, And the worse, the nearer they are to mend.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Serenity
Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where’er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Pride
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather than its defects.—The passions of men have made it malignant, as the bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Nor deem the irrevocable past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Reflection, Past
All things are symbols: the external shows of Nature have their image in the mind.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Wilderness
The day is done, and darkness falls from the wings of night.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Night
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
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, who has sight so keen and strong That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroken; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Thy voice is celestial melody.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Love
What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight—the hour of love—the hour of adoration—the hour of rest—when we think of those we love, only to regret that we have not love them more dearly; when we remember our enemies only to forgive them.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
He speaketh not; and yet there lies
A conversation in his eyes.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Conversation
The bravest are the tenderest. The loving are the daring.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Risk, Love, Courage
Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Service, Giving, Adventure, Kindness, Gifts
Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Danger
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- James Russell Lowell American Poet, Critic
- Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
- Celia Thaxter American Poet
- Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
- Emily Dickinson American Poet
- Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
- John Greenleaf Whittier American Poet, Abolitionist
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
- Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
- John Ciardi American Poet
Leave a Reply