Famous Quotes & Sayings

Hermann Hesse

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

Hermann Hesse

That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!

Hermann Hesse

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Hermann Hesse

That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized.

Hermann Hesse

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.

Hermann Hesse

That seems to be the way of things. Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that.

Hermann Hesse

Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.

Hermann Hesse

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

Hermann Hesse

All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?

Hermann Hesse

Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

Henry Van Dyke

Like water spilt upon the ground--alas, Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass; Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!

Henry Van Dyke

Life is an arrow, therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- Then draw it to the head and let it go!

Henry Van Dyke

How fascinating is death, the extinction of life. One moment here and the next gone. The light put out and only the empty bag of the body left.

Henry Van Dyke

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

Henry Van Dyke

Love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.

Henry Van Dyke

There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light, And every kind of love makes a glory in the night. There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest, But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.

Henry Van Dyke

The strength of your life is measured by the strength of your will.

Henry Van Dyke

Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.

Henry Van Dyke

Hours fly, Flowers die: New days, New ways: Pass by! Love stays.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright. The house is full of life and light.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. . . . He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. . . . Toiling,-rejoicing,-sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Learn to labour and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Quotes about Life Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art; to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Into each life some rain must fall.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love thee, as the good love heaven.