Quotations by:
    Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“A Psalm of Life” (1838)
 
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Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“A Psalm of Life”, 3, Voices of the Night (1839)
 
Added on 20-Feb-13 | Last updated 20-Feb-13
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I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Christmas Bells,” st. 1 (1864)
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If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Elegiac Verse,” In the Harbor (1882)

See Emerson.
 
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The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Holidays” (1876)
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The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Morituri Salutamus,” st. 21 (1875)
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Dead he is not, but departed — for the artist never dies.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Nuremberg,” st. 13
 
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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 (1807-1882) American poet
“Resignation,” st. 5 (1849), The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
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Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table Talk,” Drift-Wood (1857)
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A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk,” Drift-wood (1857)
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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 (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk,” Driftwood (1857)
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As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies a dull brain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk,” Driftwood (1857)
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Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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Added on 9-Jun-19 | Last updated 16-Apr-21
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Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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Added on 23-Apr-21 | Last updated 23-Apr-21
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There are but few thinkers in the world but a great many people who think they think.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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Added on 30-Apr-21 | Last updated 30-Apr-21
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A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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Added on 7-May-21 | Last updated 7-May-21
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The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-talk”
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Added on 14-May-21 | Last updated 14-May-21
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The years come when the mind, like an old mill, ceases to grind; when weeds grow on the wall; and through every crack and leak in dam and sluice, spouts the useless water.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-talk”
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The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye, — not creation, but insight.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-talk”
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The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-talk”
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Added on 4-Jun-21 | Last updated 4-Jun-21
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Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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Added on 25-Jun-21 | Last updated 25-Jun-21
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Silence is a great peacemaker.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-talk”
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The difference between a man of genius seen in his works and in person, is like that of a lighthouse seen by night and by day, — in the one case only a great fiery brain, in the other only a white tower.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
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We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;
And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“The Fire of Drift-Wood”, l. 13 in The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
 
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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 (1807-1882) American poet
“The Poets,” Atlantic Monthly (Jul 1878)
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Added on 23-May-17 | Last updated 23-May-17
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Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“The Rainy Day,” st. 3 (1842)
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Added on 19-Apr-17 | Last updated 19-Apr-17
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Toiling, — rejoicing — sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“The Village Blacksmith”
 
Added on 11-May-12 | Last updated 11-May-12
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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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“There Was a Little Girl,” st. 1 (c. 1850)
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Often printed with "She was very, very good" for the penultimate line, and sometimes with "And when she was bad" (e.g.).

His son, Ernest, says that Longfellow composed the rhyme while walking back and forth with his infant second daughter (Alice Mary, b. 1850). There is some dispute about this, as well as his authorship of the other stanzas of the poem.

 
Added on 30-Jan-24 | Last updated 30-Jan-24
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Trust no future, however pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, — act in the living Present!
Heart within and God overhead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
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We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funeral tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
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The grave is but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
A Covered Bridge at Lucerne
 
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
A Psalm of Life
 
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No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere
A record, written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or a curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Christus, pt. 2 “A Village Church” (1872)
 
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Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrow which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Hyperion: A Romance, 3.4 (1839)
 
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In this world a man must either be an anvil or a hammer.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Hyperion, “The Story of Brother Bernardus” (1839)
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The little I have seen of the world … teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Hyperion, 4.3 (1839)
 
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It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion. There are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Hyperion, Book 2, ch. 3 (1839)
 
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There’s a brave fellow! There’s a man of pluck!
A man who’s not afraid to say his say,
Though a whole town’s against him.

Longfellow - brave pluck - wist_info quote

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
John Endicott, Act 2, sc. 2 (1868)
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We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanagh: A Tale, ch. 1 (1849)
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In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanagh: A Tale, ch. 13 (1849)
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With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under the ground.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanagh: A Tale, ch. 13 (1849)
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The secret demerits of which we alone, perhaps, are conscious, are often more difficult to bear than those which have been publicly censured in us, and thus in some degree atoned for.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanagh: A Tale, ch. 30 (1849)
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Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanaugh: A Tale, ch. 13 (1849)
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For after all, the best thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Tales of a Wayside Inn, “The Poet’s Tale; The Birds of Killingworth” (1863)
 
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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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Tales of a Wayside Inn, Part 3 “The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth” part 4 (1874)
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Deeds are better things than words are,
Actions mightier than boastings.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
 
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