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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Love

1807–1882 United States

← All quotes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

17 quotes

O, there is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love,—the first fluttering of its silken wings.

Hyperion (1839)

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)

Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the springs to meet the sunshine.

The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Like Dian's kiss, unask'd, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought.

Endymion (1818)

Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
It serves for food and raiment.

The Spanish Student (1843)

Sang in tones of deep emotion,
Songs of love and songs of longing.

The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

I love thee, as the good love heaven.

The Spanish Student (1843)

For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.

The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?

Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love and joy and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish
And in itself to ashes burn.

Hyperion (1839)

Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
As in a foundering ship.

The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

The world loves a spice of wickedness.

Hyperion (1839)

Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.

Table-Talk (1857)

Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth;
Greater than anger is love that subdueth.

Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)

Ah, how skillful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love's command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love's behest
Far excelleth all the rest!

I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before.

That was the first sound in the song of love!
Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.
Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
And play the prelude of our fate. We hear
The voice prophetic, and are not alone.

The Spanish Student (1843)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.