Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Few save the poor feel for the poor.

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

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.

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

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

Confidence is its own security.

A woman's fame is the tomb of her happiness.

When does the mind put forth its powers? when are the stores of memory unlocked? when does wit 'flash from fluent lips?' -- when but after a good dinner? Who will deny its influence on the affections? Half our friends are born of turbots and truffles.

charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfillment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.

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

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human.

Business before pleasure ...

Oh, no! my heart can never be Again in lightest hopes the same; The love that lingers there for thee Hath more of ashes than of flame.

All beginnings are very troublesome things ...

in came ... a baby, eloquent as infancy usually is, and like most youthful orators, more easily heard than understood.

Affection exaggerates its own offenses ...

there is nothing so easy as to be wise for others; a species of prodigality, by-the-by - for such wisdom is wholly wasted.

Anticipation is a bad sleeping draught.

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.

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.

A blossom full of promise is life's joy, That never comes to fruit. Hope, for a time, Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light, And it looks flourishing--a little while-- 'T is pass'd, we know not whither, but 't is gone.

One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy.

The stars are so far, far away!

I can pass days Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees, Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,-- The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs, Each tree a natural harp,--each different leaf A different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving.

Are we not like the actor of old times, who wore his mask so long his face took its likeness?

My heart is its own grave!

it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.

anybody's applause is better than nobody's.

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.

Suicide and antipathy to fires in a bedroom seem to be among the national characteristics. Perhaps the same moral cause may originate both.

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

There is no denying that there are 'royal roads' through existence for the upper classes; for them, at least, the highways are macadamized, swept, and watered.

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.

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

I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.

Childhood, whose very happiness is love.

though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.

It is strange what society will endure from its idols.

a preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical ...

Sneering springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be that wishes to take refuge in doubt.

Hopes and regrets are the sweetest links of existence.

The rich know not how hard it is to be of needful rest and needful food debarred.

I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is a prejudice in its most picturesque shape. But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.

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

We are ourselves our happiness.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.[to feel unhappy you need the time to consider how your lot could be better]

Travel is as much a passion as ambition or love.

Hope is love's happiness, but not its life.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

I do love violets; they tell the history of woman's love.

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

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

The dream on the pillow, That flits with the day, The leaf of the willow A breath wears away; The dust on the blossom, The spray on the sea; Ay,--ask thine own bosom-- Are emblems of thee.

I never cast a flower away, A gift of one who car'd for me; A flower--a faded flower, But it was done reluctantly.

I would give worlds, could I believe One-half that is profess'd me; Affection! could I think it Thee, When Flattery has caress'd me.

Alas! the praise given to the ear Ne'er was nor ne'er can be sincere.

In our road through life we may happen to meet with a man casting a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of another which stone he has carried in his bosom to sling against that very other's head.

Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings; solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui.

Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows.

Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee.

So much to win, so much to lose, No marvel that I fear to choose.

But ignorance is happiness,When young Hope is to show the way

Alas! we makeA ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolvesLook down upon our slumbering acts.

Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair.

Delicious tears! The heart's own dew.

From religion ... they will learn the only true lesson of equality - the conviction that our destinies are not in our own hands; they will see that no situation in life is without its share of suffering; - and this perpetual reference to a higher power ought equally to teach the rich humility, and the poor devotion.

Shopping, true feminine felicity!

In marriage, as in chemistry, opposites have often an attraction.

the blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality.

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 ...

Nothing more strongly marks the insufficiency of luxuries than the ease with which people grow accustomed to them; they are rather known by their want than by their presence. The word 'blasé' has been coined expressly for the use of the upper classes.

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.

Our first love-letter ... There is so much to be said, and which no words seems exactly to say - the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach.

Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened.

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present.

Alas! we give our own coloring to the actions of others.

To this hour, the great science and duty of politics is lowered by the petty leaven of small and personal advantage ...

The past is perpetual youth to the heart.

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

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.

How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion!

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.

Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

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

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.

... true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity.

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!