Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes - Page 3

the blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality.

I do not think that life has a suspense more sickening than that of expecting a letter which does not come.

habit is our idea of eternity.

How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion!

it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.

It merely shews, after all, that affection is a habit.

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and the despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.

My tears are buried in my heart, like cave-locked fountains sleeping.

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present.

Every other species of talent carries with it its eternity; we enjoy the work of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, only as thousands will do after us; but the actor - his memory is with his generation, and that passes away.

We would liken music to Aladdin's lamp — worthless in itself, not so for the spirits which obey its call. We love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings, it can summon with a touch.

One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice - the severity of 'the ungentle craft' originates in its own want of success: they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over.

Do anything but love; or if thou lovest and art a woman, hide thy love from him whom thou dost worship; never let him know how dear he is; flit like a bird before him; lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower; but be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird, when caught and caged, be left to pine neglected and perish in forgetfulness.

Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings; solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui.

Surprises are like misfortunes or herrings - they rarely come single.

sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty; secondly, either that of admiration or fault-finding - the latter a very animated enjoyment.

he who seeks pleasure with reference to himself, not others, will ever find that pleasure is only another name for discontent.

who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?

There are words to paint the misery of love, but none to paint its happiness.

... many a heart is caught in the rebound ... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy. ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay.

A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble.

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.

There is no denying that there are 'royal roads' through existence for the upper classes; for them, at least, the highways are macadamized, swept, and watered.

ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favors of which we are ashamed.