Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Alexander Smith - Page 2

Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.

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.

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

My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

And in any case, to the old man, when the world becomes trite, the triteness arises not so much from a cessation as from a transference of interest. What is taken from this world is given to the next. The glory is in the east in the morning, it is in the west in the afternoon, and when it is dark the splendour is irradiating the realm of the under-world. He would only follow.

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.

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.

Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.

Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.

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.

The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.

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.

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

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

Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.

The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.

I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.

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

In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.

Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

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

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

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

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

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.

The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning—first fallen flake of the coming snows of age—is a disagreeable thing.... So are flying twinges of gout, shortness of breath on the hill-side, the fact that even the moderate use of your friend's wines at dinner upsets you. These things are disagreeable because they tell you that you are no longer young—that you have passed through youth, are now in middle age, and faring onward to the shadows in which, somewhere, a grave is hid.

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

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.

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

A single soul is richer than all the worlds.

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

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.

The only thing a man knows is himself.

A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

We have two lives; The soul of man is like the rolling world, One half in day, the other dipt in night; The one has music and the flying cloud, The other, silence and the wakeful stars.

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

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

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

Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.

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.

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

Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!

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

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.

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

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

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!