Alexander Smith Quotes - Page 4

The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.

The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide.

The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.

The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.

Each time we love,We turn a nearer and a broader markTo that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.

One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.

To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,--just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.

Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)

Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles.

A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.

My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable.

We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.

A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.

If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.

Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps.

Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!

Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo--from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at.

A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.