Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) is one of America’s best-known poets, recognized for his insistent moral tone, sentimentality, and serene idealism. He is best remembered for such poems as “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Village Blacksmith” (both 1841) and for narrative poems such as “Evangeline” (1847,) “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855,) and “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861.)
Longfellow also produced a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1867.) His poems, such as “There was a little girl,” remain familiar to this day as rhymes and melodies.
Longfellow’s prose romance Hyperion (1839,) his tale of a young man who seeks to forget sorrow in travel, was a result of his grief after the death of his first wife in 1835. Longfellow’s creative life was again interrupted by the 1861 death of his second wife, who was burned to death in a domestic accident.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
As the turning of logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies will a dull brain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Study
The divine insanity of noble minds, that never falters nor abates, but labors, endures, and waits, till all that it foresees it finds, or what it cannot find, creates.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Perseverance
All things are symbols: the external shows of Nature have their image in the mind
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Wilderness
No one is so utterly desolate, but some heart, though unknown, responds unto his own.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A word that has been said may be unsaid—it is but air. But when a deed is done, it cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Action, Deeds
Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Hope
Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Sympathy, Dying, Death
The human voice is the organ of the soul.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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: Past, Reflection
The day is done, and darkness falls from the wings of night.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Night
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 morning, pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Morning
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
The joy of meeting, not unmixed with pain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Meeting
How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Beginnings, Aspirations, Youth, Time
Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Awareness, Realization, Acceptance, Defeat, Failure
We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Fanaticism
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
The every day cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration, and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon the wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move, and the clock stands still.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Success & Failure, Doing Your Best, Success
A coquette is a young lady of more beauty than sense, more accomplishments than learning, more charms of person than graces of mind, more admirers than friends, more fools than wise men for attendants.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother’s face, her aspect and her attitude.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art
Oh, the long and dreary winter! Oh, the cold and cruel winter.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Seasons
All was silent as before –
All silent save the dripping rain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: One liners, Weather, Silence, Rain
The bravest are the tenderest. The loving are the daring.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Courage, Love, Risk
The day is done; and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Character
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
Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Mercy
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