Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Learn to labour and to wait.

Let us, then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Age is opportunity no less than youth itself.

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

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.

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted,
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning
Back to their springs, like the rain shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.

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

You know I say just what I think, and nothing more and less. I cannot say one thing and mean another.

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

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

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

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

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

?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.?

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

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

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Driftwood; Table Talk, 1857
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

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

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.

Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow