Quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One if by land, two if by sea.

Write on your doors the saying wise and old, Be bold! be bold! and everywhere-- Be bold; Be not too bold! Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less; Better like Hector in the field to die, Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly

Be strong! Be good! Be pure! The right only shall endure; And all things else are but false pretenses.

Resolve, and thou art free. But breathe the air Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits Will lift thee to the level of themselves.

Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!   Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.   Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike,   Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

Think of your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!

Great men die and are forgotten, Wise men speak; their words of wisdom Perish in the ears that hear them, Do not reach the generations That, as yet unborn, are waiting In the great, mysterious darkness Of the speechless days that shall be!

Frost kills the flowers that bloom out of season...

Awake! arise! the hour is late! Angels are knocking at thy door! They are in haste and cannot wait, And once departed come no more. Awake! arise! the athlete's arm Loses its strength by too much rest; The fallow land, the untilled farm Produces only weeds at best.

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!

The life of man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams but in active charity and in willing service.

Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,—   Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from   Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.   Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;   But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners;   There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.

Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think." —

Its reward is in the doing, And the rapture of pursuing Is the prize

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Into each life some rain must fall.

I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away.

Art is the child of Nature.

There are no birds in last year's nest.

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

You judge yourself by what your capable of doing, while others judge you by what you have already done

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?

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!