Quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Where, twisted round the barren oak, The summer vine in beauty clung, And summer winds the stillness broke, The crystal icicle is hung.

Beautiful in form and feature, lovely as the day, can there be so fair a creature formed of common clay?

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.

The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness, the taste and stain from the lees of the vat.

The picture that approaches sculpture nearest Is the best picture.

The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight But they while their companions slept Were toiling upward in the night.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, a shadow on those features fair and thin. And softly, from the hushed and darkened room, two angels issued, where but one went in.

And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.

Southward with fleet of ice Sailed the corsair Death; Wild and fast blew the blast, And the east-wind was his breath.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.

My designs and labors and aspirations are my only friends.

The low desire, the base design That makes another's virtues less.

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

No one is so accursed by fate, no one so utterly desolate, but some heart though unknown responds unto his own.

Your education begins where what is called your education is over. Your fate is but the common lot of all.

Evil is only good perverted.

So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest.

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.

The Wreck of the Hesperus But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes! O drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again.

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears.

Wisely improve the Present. It is thine.