Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“Act—act in the living Present!”
Meaning & context
The imperative shifts attention from regret and speculation toward action available in the present.
Source details
A Psalm of Life; the line follows the instruction to let the dead past bury its dead.
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“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”
Meaning & context
The poem rejects living backward and immediately redirects attention toward action available in the present.
Source details
A Psalm of Life, in the stanza beginning “Trust no Future.”
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“Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate.”
Meaning & context
The poem answers uncertainty with action and steadiness rather than waiting for conditions to become ideal.
Source details
Poem “A Psalm of Life.”
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“Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait.”
Meaning & context
Progress is pictured as a combination of effort and patience rather than nonstop urgency.
Source details
A Psalm of Life, final line.
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“Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime.”
Meaning & context
Examples from other lives can enlarge a person’s sense of what is possible without removing the need for personal effort.
Source details
Poem “A Psalm of Life.”
Source identified6
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“The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night.”
Meaning & context
Longfellow gives evening a gentle physical movement, making darkness feel less like absence and more like something settling over the world.
Source details
The Day Is Done, opening stanza; Longfellow introduces the evening mood before asking for soothing poetry.
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“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight.”
Meaning & context
Sustained achievement is presented as the result of continued effort rather than a single dramatic leap.
Source details
Poem “The Ladder of St. Augustine.”
