Quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A banner with the strange device,Excelsior!

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

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

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!

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

The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.

Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

I remember the black wharves and the slips,And the sea-tides tossing free;And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,And the beauty and majesty of the ships,And the magic of the sea.

Christ save us all from a death like this,On the reef of Norman's Woe!

But the father answered never a word,A frozen corpse was he.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

There was a little girlWho had a little curlRight in the middle of her forehead;And when she was goodShe was very, very good,But when she was bad she was horrid.

Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours.

One if by land, and two if by sea;And I on the opposite shore will be,Ready to ride and spread the alarmThrough every Middlesex village and farm.

The day is done, and the darknessFalls from the wings of Night,As a feather is wafted downwardFrom an eagle in his flight.

I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet.

I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighbourhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.

There he goes, in his long russet surtout, sweeping down yonder gravel-walk, beneath the trees, like a yellow leaf in autumn wafted along by a fitful gust of wind.

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.

There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.

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.