Quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Loss and Gain When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride. I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside. But who shall dare To measure loss and gain in this wise? Defeat may be victory in disguise; The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.

Love is the root of creation; God's essence; worlds without number Lie in his bosom like children; he made them for this purpose only Only to love and to be loved again, he breathed forth his spirit Into the slumbering dust, and upright standing, it laid its Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with a flame out of heaven Quench, oh quench not that flame! It is the breath of your being

Yes, Death brings us again to our friends. They are waiting for us, and we shall not long delay. They have gone before us, and are like the angels in heaven. They stand near the borders of the grave to welcome us, with the countenance of affection, which they wore on earth; yet more lovely, more radiant, more spiritual! O, he spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels!

It is difficult to know what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'Tis nature's plan The child should grow into the man, The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray; In youth the heart exults and sings, The pulses leap, the feet have wings; In age the cricket chirps, and brings The harvest home of day.

If you knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.

If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite its oppressor.

It takes less time to do a thing right than explain why you did it wrong....

Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky.

Thou hast taught me, Silent River! Many a lesson, deep and long; Thou hast been a generous giver; I can give thee but a song. Oft in sadness and in illness, I have watched thy current glide, Till the beauty of its stillness Overflowed me, like a tide. And in better hours and brighter, When I saw thy waters gleam, I have felt my heart beat lighter, And leap onward with thy stream.

I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'ver me That my soul cannot resist

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.

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,--act in the living present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.

It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much.

Great is the art of beginning, but even greater is the art of ending.

It has done me some good to be somewhat parched by the heart and drenched by the rain of life.

The title Voices of the Night originally was used by Mr. Longfellow for the poem Footsteps of Angels; then he gave it to the first collected volume of his poetry with special application to the group of eight poems following Prelude. Here it is confined to this group.

One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm.

It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to declare it: I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak with you always.

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?