Alexander Smith Quotes

Alexander Smith weaves grand, poetic musings on nature, life and time that linger like a quiet sunrise.

42 quotes

1. We hear the wail of the remorseful winds In their strange penance. And this wretched orb Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world, Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.

2. 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.

3. Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.

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

5. Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.

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

7. A poem round and perfect as a star.

8. Some books are drenched sands On which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, Like a wrecked argosy.

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

10. We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who hold 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.

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

12. Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

13. Everything is sweetened by risk.

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

15. 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.

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

17. 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!

18. There is a certain even-handed justice in Time; and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.

22. 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.

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

24. In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

25. The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.

26. To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

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

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

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

30. A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

31. It is the sternest philosophy, but on the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena of the world, failure and success are not accidents, as we so frequently suppose, but the strictest justice.

32. 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.

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

34. My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest...

35. A great man is the man who does something for the first time.

36. Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.

37. 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.

38. 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.

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

40. 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.

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

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