Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor’s nose.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Health
He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is.—O holy tavern! 0 miraculous tavern!—holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which, of themselves turn round and round.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
Topics: Suffering, Adversity, Difficulties, Endurance
Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, are merely shadows cast by outward things on stone or canvas, having in themselves no separate existence. Architecture, existing in itself, and not in seeming a something it is not, surpasses them as substance shadow.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Science, Architecture
Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the flowers,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
Take care of your garden
And keep out the weeds,
Fill it with sunshine
Kind words and kind deeds.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Kindness
All things come round to him who will but wait.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Patience, Resilience
Enjoy the spring of love and youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year’s nest.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Youth, Time, Birds
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Love
How absolute, and omnipotent is the silence of the night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible.—From all the measureless depths of air around us, comes a half sound, a half whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction ever beginning, never ending—the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour glass of time.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Night
Many men do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Principles
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
Topics: Present, The Present, Live-now
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Character
The history of the past is a mere puppet show.—A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again.—You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again.—And it is all over.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: History
And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares, that infest the day, shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, and as silently steal away.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Night
Tomorrow!—I dare not ask; I know not what is best: God hath already said what shall betide.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Noble souls, through dust and heat, rise from disaster and defeat the stronger.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Memory
It is an indiscreet and troublesome ambition that cares so much about fame; about what the world says of us; to be always looking in the faces of others for approval; to be always anxious about the effect of what we do or say; to be always shouting to hear the echoes of our own voices.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Fame
In ourselves are triumph and defeat.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Victory
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Love
A vague recollection fills my mind, an image dazzling, but undefined, like the memory of a gorgeous dream.—It crowds my brain confusedly, but will not stay.—It changes like the tremulous sunshine on the wave, till imagination itself is dazzled, bewildered, over powered.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Ideas
If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Mind, Health
All things are symbols: the external shows of Nature have their image in the mind
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Wilderness
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 on his brazen mail.—His crimson scarf is rent; his scarlet banner dripping with gore; his step like a flail on the threshing floor.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Seasons, Autumn
Act—act in the living present.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction, The Present
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Service
In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Simplicity
Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Danger
This country is not priest-ridden, but press-ridden.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, in the broad and fiery street, and in the narrow lane; how beautiful is the rain!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Rain
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
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