Author

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American · 1807-1882 · 41 quotes

41

Quotes

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American · 1807–1882

41 quotes in our collection

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the American poet who, in the mid-nineteenth century, became the most popular in the English-speaking world — a distinction he holds still in terms of lines remembered by people who cannot name the source. Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere's Ride, and The Village Blacksmith entered the American imagination at its formation and stayed. Born in Portland, Maine in 1807, he spent most of his professional life at Harvard, translating Dante and teaching modern languages while producing the verse that made him famous. He lost his wife to a fire in 1861 and converted the grief into the Divina Commedia translations and the Tales of a Wayside Inn. His prose sense was as reliable as his verse: let us be what we are, and speak what we think, and keep ourselves loyal to truth.

Common Themes

nature5 heart5 character4 death4 modesty4

sorrow

4

love3

world3

Collected Quotes

All quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend

Source: The New England Tragedies, John Endicott (1868)

All are architects of fate, working in these walls of time

Source: The Builders, The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

There's nothing in this world as sweet as love, and next to love the sweetest thing is hate.

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

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

In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity

The morning pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air

He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels

There is no grief like the grief that does not speak

As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical

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

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined way, but to act that each tomorrow may find us further than today

The human voice is the organ of the soul

The day is done, and the darkness, falls from the wings of night, as a feather is wafted downward, from an eagle in his flight

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide

Nature is a revelation of God; art is a revelation of man

Sit in reverie, and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind

Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things keep ourselves loyal to the truth

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy

Noble souls, through dust and heat, rise from disaster and defeat the stronger