Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) is one of the America’s best-known poets, recognized for his insistent moral tone, sentimentality, and serene idealism. He is best remembered for such poems as “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Village Blacksmith” (both 1841) and for narrative poems such as “Evangeline” (1847,) “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855,) and “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861.)
Longfellow also produced a translation of Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy (1867.) His poems such as “There was a little girl” remain familiar to this day as rhymes and melodies.
Longfellow’s prose romance Hyperion (1839,) his tale of a young man who seeks to forget sorrow in travel, was a result of his grief after the death of his first wife in 1835. Longfellow’s creative life was again interrupted by the 1861 death of his second wife, who was burned to death in a domestic accident.
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Noble souls, through dust and heat, rise from disaster and defeat the stronger.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing out from the top of the house as if they had built it.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; amid these earthly damps what seem to us but sad, funeral tapers may be heaven’s distant lamps.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The bravest are the tenderest. The loving are the daring.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Courage, Risk, Love
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Integrity, Judgment
This memory brightens o’er the past; as when the sun, concealed; behind some cloud that near us hangs; shines on a distant field.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Perseverance, Difficulties, Life, Endurance, Resolve, Difficulty
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Success, Success & Failure, Doing Your Best
Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Perseverance, Endurance, Resolve, Beginning
All things come round to him who will but wait.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Resilience, Patience
Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Service
In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Simplicity
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Fear, Anxiety, Time Management, Courage, Growth, Time, Future, Living, Tomorrow, The Future, Stress
Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Kindness, Giving, Service
The greatest grace of a gift, perhaps, is that it anticipates and admits of no return.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Giving
Tomorrow is the mysterious, unknown guest.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
Sometimes we may learn more from a man’s errors than from his virtues.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Mistakes
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Enjoy the spring of love and youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year’s nest.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Time, Youth
Thy fate is the common fate of all,|Into each life some rain must fall,|Some days must be dark and dreary.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Difficulties, Acceptance, Difficulty, Nature
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.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The morning, pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Morning
He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Sympathy
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Service
Life is real! Life is earnest!|And the grave is not its goal;|Dust thou art, to dust returnest,|Was not spoken of the soul.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Age, Aging
Let nothing disturb thee, Let nothing affright thee, All things are passing, God changeth never.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Difficulty
Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Hope
Kind hearts are the gardens,|Kind thoughts are the roots,|Kind words are the flowers,|Kind deeds are the fruits.||Take care of your garden|And keep out the weeds,|Fill it with sunshine|Kind words and kind deeds.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Kindness
Let us then be up and doing,|With a heart for any fate,|Still achieving, still pursuing,|Learn to labor and to wait.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Resilience, One Step at a Time, Success & Failure, Morning, Achievement, Patience, Accomplishment
Let us then be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Truth
If spring came but once in 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 now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lives of great men all remind us|We can make our lives sublime,|And, departing, leave behind us|Footprints on the sands of time.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Greatness, Living, Role models, Men
He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Self-respect
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,|Life is checkered shade and sunshine.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Many men do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Success, Persistence, Perseverance, Endurance, Resolve
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Time, Doing, Integrity
Some must follow and some command, though all are born of clay.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Love gives itself; it is not bought.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Love
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Children
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Topics: Goals, Vision, Aspirations, Nature
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