Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.

Thoughts can be revised. Deeds cannot.

I like to say there's certain things you can't take back: One of them is 'I love you,' and one of them is bullets.

You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done.

It must be the ultimate punishment, don't you think, to finally gain wisdom, only to realize that the consequences of your actions are irrevocable?

There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone.

We have made mistakes. In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions. And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear. But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.

You can't take back an act you were able to think.

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

Perhaps nothing ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

You can't talk your way out of something you behaved your way into.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

You can't create a monster, then whine when it stomps on a few buildings.

There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.

It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.

A life once spent is irrevocable. It will remain to be contemplated through eternity. If it be marked with sins, the marks will be indelible. If it has been a useless life, it can never be improved. Such it will stand forever and ever. The same may be said of each day.

That's the thing about interviews, at some point you're going to change your mind. But it's there forever and you can't escape it.

I did mostly good things, except light things on fire.

Many of our choices have led to the predicaments we are presently complaining about.

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.