The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowSimplicity is the character of the spring of life, costliness becomes its autumn; but a neatness and purity, like that of the snow-drop or lily of the valley, is the peculiar fascination of beauty, to which it lends enchantment, and gives what amiability is to the mind.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThree silences there are: the first of speech, the second of desire, the third of thought.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThere is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowIn the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowAh, how wonderful is the advent of the Spring!โthe great annual miracle.... which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation would there be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change!... We are like children who are astonished and delighted only by the second-hand of the clock, not by the hour-hand.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow