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.

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 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 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.

Everything is sweetened by risk.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A single soul is richer than all the worlds.

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

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

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

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

To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.