Quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every man has a paradise around him till he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden.

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

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

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

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

A spirit of criticism, if indulged in, leads to a censoriousness of disposition that is destructive of all nobler feeling. The man who lives to find faults has a miserable mission.

Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail.

Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice.

A solid man of Boston; A comfortable man with dividends, And the first salmon and the first green peas.

Some poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud.

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

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark.

He that respects himself is safe from others; He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

What shall I say to you? What can I say Better than silence is?...

The men that women marry, And why they marry them, will always be A marvel and a mystery to the world.

Now had the season returned when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters...

And the night shall be filled with music...

By too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She will never see her children wronged. 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. Thus has many a monarch mind been dethroned.

Success is not something to wait for, it is something to work for.

Difficulty on the way to victory is opportunity for God to work

Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others.

"If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change."

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