Alexander Smith Quotes

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

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

Trees are your best antiques

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.

Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.

Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.

The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.

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.

If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.

We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.

Everything is sweetened by risk.

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.

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

In winter, when the dismal rain Comes down in slanting lines, And Wind, that grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines.

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.

It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.

How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.

Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.

The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore-- A shore that wears on her alluring brows Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, That blushed a tell-tale.

Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.

God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur.

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.

How beautiful the yesterday that stood Over me like a rainbow! I am alone, The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.

The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in god and woman.

A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.

Good-humor and, generosity carry day with the popular heart all the world over.

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.

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

To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

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

A single soul is richer than all the worlds.

Every man's road in life is marked by the grave of his personal likings.

Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.

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

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

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