Browse quotations by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
“Act—act in the living Present!”
The imperative shifts attention from regret and speculation toward action available in the present.
Source note: A Psalm of Life; the line follows the instruction to let the dead past bury its dead.
“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”
The poem rejects living backward and immediately redirects attention toward action available in the present.
Source note: A Psalm of Life, in the stanza beginning “Trust no Future.”
“Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate.”
The poem answers uncertainty with action and steadiness rather than waiting for conditions to become ideal.
Source note: Poem “A Psalm of Life.”
“Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait.”
Progress is pictured as a combination of effort and patience rather than nonstop urgency.
Source note: A Psalm of Life, final line.
“Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime.”
Examples from other lives can enlarge a person’s sense of what is possible without removing the need for personal effort.
Source note: Poem “A Psalm of Life.”
“The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night.”
Longfellow gives evening a gentle physical movement, making darkness feel less like absence and more like something settling over the world.
Source note: The Day Is Done, opening stanza; Longfellow introduces the evening mood before asking for soothing poetry.
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight.”
Sustained achievement is presented as the result of continued effort rather than a single dramatic leap.
Source note: Poem “The Ladder of St. Augustine.”