Quote

Many critics are like woodpeckers, who, instead of enjoying the fruit and shadow of a tree, hop incessantly around the trunk, pecking holes in the bark to discover some little worm or other.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Age: 75 †
Born: 1807
Born: January 1
Died: 1882
Died: March 24
Novelist
Poet
Professor
Translator
Writer
Portland
Maine
Henry W. Longfellow
H. W. Longfellow
00018405207 IPI
Longfellow
Around
Holes
Trunk
Littles
Discover
Trunks
Little
Critics
Incessantly
Many
Fruit
Worm
Like
Shadow
Bark
Instead
Worms
Tree
Hops
Pecking
Enjoy
Enjoying
Woodpeckers

More quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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More hearts are breaking in this world of ours Than one would say. In distant villages And solitudes remote, where winds have wafted The barbed seeds of love, or birds of passage Scattered them in their flight, do they take root, And grow in silence, and in silence perish.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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But the great Master said, I see No best in kind, but in degree I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Well I know the secret places, And the nests in hedge and tree At what doors are friendly faces, In what hearts are thoughts of me.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.
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'Tis always morning somewhere, and aboveThe awakening continents, from shore to shore,Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Mine is the Month of Roses yes, and mine The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine, The foliage of the valleys and the heights. Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights The mower's scythe makes music to my ear I am the mother of all dear delights I am the fairest daughter of the year.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Mercy more becomes a magistrate than the vindictive wrath which men call justice.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all the hearts to behold the miraculous change.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare to think.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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This will be a great day in our history the date of a New Revolution - quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind which will come soon!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Then followed that beautiful season... Summer.... Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light and the landscape Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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In the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow