Top 170 Quotes & Sayings by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean.

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

We might have been - these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

There is a large stock on hand; but somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us but our own.

I think hearts are very much like glasses. If they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time.

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

Delicious tears! The heart's own dew.

Were it not better to forget than to remember and regret?

We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

Toil is the portion of day, as sleep is that of night; but if there be one hour of the twenty-four which has the life of day without its labor, and the rest of night without its slumber, it is the lovely and languid hour of twilight.

We are ourselves our happiness.

There is the cause for pleasure and for pain: But music moves us, and we know not why? We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source. Is it the language of some other state, Born of its memory! For what can wake The soul's strong instinct of another world, Like music?

Truly, a little love-making is a very pleasant thing.

Whenever I hear a man talking of the advantages of our ill-used sex, I look upon it as the prelude to some new act of authority.

Experience teaches, it is true; but she never teaches in time.

The wind has a language, I would I could learn! Sometimes 'tis soothing, and sometimes 'tis stern, Sometimes it comes like a low sweet song, And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along, And the forest is lull'd by the dreamy strain, And slumber sinks down on the wandering main, And its crystal arms are folded in rest, And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast.

There is no existence so content as that whose present is engrossed by employment, and whose future is filled by some strong hope, the truth of which is never proved. Toil and illusion are the only secrets to make life tolerable.

the fact is, that life is too short to be occupied by aught but the present - hope and remembrance are equally a waste of time.

Confidence is its own security.

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

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

That which is always within our reach, is always the last thing we take; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all.

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

We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it.

Politeness, however, acts the lady's maid to our thoughts; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public.

To enjoy yourself is the easy method to give enjoyment to others.

Ah, tell me not that memory Sheds gladness o'er the past; What is recalled by faded flowers, Save that they did not last? Were it not better to forget, Than but remember and regret?

The fearless make their own way.

How beautiful, buoyant, and glad is morning! The first sunshine on the leaves: the first wind, laden with the first breath of the flowers—that deep sigh with which they seem to waken from sleep; the first dew, untouched even by the light foot of the early hare; the first chirping of the rousing birds, as if eager to begin song and flight; all is redolent of the strength given by rest, and the joy of conscious life.

The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may with equal truth be applied to the imagination - it is a good servant, but a bad master.

What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

Knowledge is much like dust - it sticks to one, one does not know how.

It is curious how inseparable eating and kindness are with some people.

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.

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.

habit is our idea of eternity.

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

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.

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.

How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning!

Nothing is so fortunate for mankind as its diversity of opinion.

All profound truths startle you in the first announcement.

Strange the affection which clings to inanimate objects - objects which cannot even know our love! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment.

The truth is, we never make for others the allowance we make for ourselves; and we should deny even our own words, could we hear them spoken by another.

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.

All beginnings are very troublesome things.

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

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.

words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element - the one by which all the others are swayed.

Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others!

I will look on the stars and look on thee, and read the page of thy destiny.

Nothing but love can answer to love; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place: it is its own sweet want.