Top 500 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “The story, from beginning to end, I found again in a heart of a friend.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

202. “The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

204. “Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution, She lives whom we call dead.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

205. “The happy should not insist too much upon their happiness in the presence of the unhappy.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

206. “Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

207. “Every author has the whole past to contend with; all the centuries are upon him. He is compared with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

208. “Fear is the virtue of slaves; but the heart that loveth is willing.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

209. “Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, our faith triumphant o’er our fears, are all with thee – are all with thee!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

210. “Youth wrenches the sceptre from old age, and sets the crown on its own head before it is entitled to it.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

211. “The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

212. “Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

213. “Then stars arise, and the night is holy.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

214. “O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

215. “The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

216. “The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

217. “But the nearer the dawn the darker the night, And by going wrong all things come right. Things have been mended that were worse, and the the worse, the nearer they are to mend.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

218. “Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

219. “The morrow was a bright September morn; The earth was beautiful as if newborn; There was nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

220. “The young may die, but the old must!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

221. “Ah, yes, the sea is still and deep, All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o’er, A plunge, a bubble, and no more.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

223. “Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

224. “As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

225. “Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

226. “Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

227. “Where’er a noble deed is wrought, Where’er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

229. “Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

230. “Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

231. “If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

232. “For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

233. “Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

234. “A word that has been said may be unsaid-it is but air. But when a deed is done, it cannot be undone, nor can our thoughts reach out to all the mischiefs that may follow.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

235. “There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

236. “If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it: Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

237. “The secret anniversaries of the heart.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

238. “Build me straight. O worthy Master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

239. “There’s nothing in this world so sweet as love. And next to love the sweetest thing is hate.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

240. “If a woman shows too often the Medusa’s head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

241. “And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

242. “I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

243. “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

244. “Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

245. “Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

246. “The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

248. “Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

249. “Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

250. “Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow