Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

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.

Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.''

There is not grief that does not speak.

Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.

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

Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead.

Some men must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay.

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

Life is real! Life is earnest! And death is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul.

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

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

Love gives itself; it is not bought.