Alexander Smith Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.174
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“Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”
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“A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (2012). “Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.58, tredition
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“I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (2012). “Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.221, tredition
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“We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“A great man is the man who does something for the first time.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.29
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“A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.258
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“To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.”
-- Alexander Smith -
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“How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (2012). “Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.223, tredition
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“If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (2012). “Dreamthorp A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.39, tredition
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“The sea complains upon a thousand shores.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1856). “Poems ... Third edition”, p.241
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“The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.”
-- Alexander Smith -
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“If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.55
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“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.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“Death takes away the commonplace of life.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.”
-- Alexander Smith -
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“The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.190
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“To-day is always different from yesterday.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander Smith -
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“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.”
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”
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“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.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander Smith -
“In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.”
-- Alexander Smith -
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“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.”
-- Alexander Smith
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