Wadsworth Quotes & Sayings

Balder the beautiful/is dead, is dead! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But the great Master said, "I see
No best in kind, but in degree;
I gave a various gift to each,
To charm, to strengthen, and to teach". — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon we trample them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are bright and full of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the starless sky of midnight! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our hearts are lamps for ever burning ... — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang with many a change, Christmas carols until morn. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From labor there shall come forth rest. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To-day, to-morrow, every day, to thousands the end of the world is close at hand. And why should we fear it? We walk here, as it were, in the crypts of life; at times, from the great cathedral above us, we can hear the organ and the chanting choir; we see the light stream through the open door, when some friend goes up before us; and shall we fear to mount the narrow staircase of the grave that leads us out of this uncertain twilight into life eternal? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let us be merciful as well as just. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The purpose of that apple tree is to grow a little new wood each year. That is what I plan to do. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When Christ ascended Triumphantly from star to star He left the gates of Heaven ajar. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
and silently steal away. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All the means of action
the shapeless masses
the materials
lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea hath its pearls
The heaven hath its stars
But my heart, my heart
Has its love. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Softly the evening came /with the sunset/. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he's wrong. — Charles Wadsworth

Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I will be a man among men; and no longer a dreamer among shadows. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The everyday 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 its wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move the clock stands still. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love gives itself; it is not bought. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A boy's will is the wind's will. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A torn jacket is soon mended, but hard words bruise the heart of a child. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under ground. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought
Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Rule by patience, Laughing Water! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn; We shudder for a moment, then awake In the broad sunshine of the other life. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;-
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How Beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
-Rain in Summer — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise,
Having naught else but Hope. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The human voice is the organ of the soul. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul. The intellect of man is enthroned visibly on his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance, but the soul, the soul reveals itself in the voice only. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To be left alone, and face to face with my own crime, had been just retribution. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Art is the child of Nature. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My own thoughts Are my companions. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music is the universal language of mankind. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence. — 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

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods are everywhere — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The air of summer was sweeter than wine. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All your strength is in union, all your danger is in discord. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

His lips quirked slightly when he noticed my incredulous expression. "I know I wouldn't. One taste of warm blood is never enough, Miss Wadsworth. — Kerri Maniscalco

One half the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love the season well When forest glades are teeming with bright forms, Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell The coming of storms. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, the taste and stain from the lees of the vat. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I cannot believe any man can be perfectly well in body, who has much labor of the mind to perform. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thus it is our daughters leave us,
Those we love, and those who love us!
Just when they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Success is not something to wait for, it is something to work for. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things are symbols. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All things must change to something new, to something strange. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the springs to meet the sunshine. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All was silent as before - All silent save the dripping rain. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature, That fashions all her works in high relief, And that is Sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth, Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire; Men, women, and all animals that breathe Are statues, and not paintings. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The true poet is a friendly man. He takes to his arms even cold and inanimate things, and rejoices in his heart. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow 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 heights by which great men reach are not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept went toiling upwards through the night.
It may not be exact but it always how I remember it. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Make not thyself the judge of any man. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women
Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers
Runnng through caverns of darkness ... — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so when a little in love. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses. Through the open doors / The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, / With feet that make no sound upon the floors. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow