Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Feb 27, 1807
  • Died: Mar 24, 1882

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then a part of Massachusetts. He studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems. Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a former headquarters of George Washington. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on his translation. He died in 1882.

Longfellow wrote predominantly lyric poems, known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend.

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

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.

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

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

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

Music is the universal language of mankind.

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

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

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

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

Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.

For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art.

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Resolve and thou art free.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

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

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

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

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

There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.