Top 694 Quotes & Sayings by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Page 12

Perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word* Wait!

The Mormons make the marriage ring, like the ring of Saturn, fluid, not solid, and keep it in its place by numerous satellites.

Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!

The country is not priest-ridded, but press-ridden.

Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.

Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. . . . He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. . . . 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.

From labor there shall come forth rest.

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.

Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead!

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears.

The thoughts of Youth are long, long thoughts

I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth, I knew not where.

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.

There is nothing perfectly secure but poverty.

A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round, If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground.

My own thoughts Are my companions.

God is not dead; nor doth He sleep; ... The wrong shall fail, The right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.

The prayer of Ajax was for light.

Be thy sleep Silent as night is, and as deep.

Let us be merciful as well as just.

Among the noblest in the land - Though man may count himself the least - That man I honor and revere, Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand, The friend of every friendless beast.

The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.

We waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into potions which, after all, do not immortalize, but only intoxicate.

Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

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

And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.

Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe.

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.

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.

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts.

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.

Let the dead Past bury its dead!