Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.

Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

Night falls fast. Today is in the past. Blown from the dark hill hither to my door Three flakes, then four Arrive, then many more.

I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.

When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand.

Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray.

We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.

A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again.

Swinging on delicate hinges the autumn leaf almost off the stem.

Cosmic systems intertwine, astral bodies drip like wine, all of nature ebbs and flows. Comets shoot across the sky, can't explain the reasons why, this is how creation goes.

As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.

But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.

The night that seemed endless hours before is now slipping through your fingers, ticking by as it falls into the past and pushes you towards the future.

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should--a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.

...the floss-silk manes tossed up like the crest of a breaking wave....Light ran and glittered on them. They were obedient...you would have sworn...as the white horses of the wave crests are to pull of the moon.

We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.

Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Winds wanders, and dews drip earthward; Rains fall, suns rise and set; Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.

I held you in my hands, Wanderer, and you were beautiful.

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance... to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man... The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

Wherever Harry went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, he could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature.

I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.

I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money – I think that can be a burden – I’m greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. On the other hand, I can find excitement, I admit, in raindrops falling on a puddle and a lot of people wouldn’t. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over.