Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Life Quotations

Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves.

The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright. The house is full of life and light.

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead.

Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. . . . He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. . . . Toiling,-rejoicing,-sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

Learn to labour and to wait.

Quotes about Life Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. 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.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

Into each life some rain must fall.

I do not love thee less for what is done, And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth My love will have a sense of pity in it, Making it less a worship than before.

Does not all the blood within me Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, As the springs to meet the sunshine.

Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse. To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing, As in a foundering ship.

How can I tell the signals and the signs By which one heart another heart divines? How can I tell the many thousand ways By which it keeps the secret it betrays?

I love thee, as the good love heaven.

Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood.

O thou child of many prayers! Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares! Care and age come unawares!

Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought!

Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare to think.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!

Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares!

Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, Life is checkered shade and sunshine.

In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause.

What else remains for me? Youth, hope and love; To build a new life on a ruined life.

Life is the gift of God, and is divine.

Each new epoch in life seems an encounter. There is a tussle and a cloud of dust, and we come out of it triumphant or crest-fallen, according as we have borne ourselves.

Youth, hope, and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream.

Youth comes but once a life time. Perhaps, but it remains strong in many for their entire lives.

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

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

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

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Ah, how skillful grows the hand That obeyeth Love's command! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth Love's behest Far excelleth all the rest!

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

That was the first sound in the song of love! Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound. Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings Of that mysterious instrument, the soul, And play the prelude of our fate. We hear The voice prophetic, and are not alone.

Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

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.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

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.

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.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.