Famous Quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (99 Quotations)

How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Youth]

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Failure]

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Books and Reading]

I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat. Of peace on earth goodwill to men.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Peace]

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, who has sight so keen and strong That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroken; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Friends and Friendship]

I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Death and Dying]

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 – [Age and Aging]

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Forgiveness]

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Perseverance]

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 – [Vision]

In ourselves are triumph and defeat.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Victory]

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Character]

Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Courtesy]

Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Difficulties]

It is a beautiful trait in the lovers character, that they think no evil of the object loved.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Love]

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Progress]

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Love]

It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Passion]

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Reason]

Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – [Health]