Top 89 Alexander Smith Quotes
#2. The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.
Alexander Smith
#3. Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.
Alexander Smith
#4. A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
Alexander Smith
#6. If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
Alexander Smith
#7. 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.
Alexander Smith
#8. Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
Alexander Smith
#9. The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.
Alexander Smith
#10. Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
Alexander Smith
#11. To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
Alexander Smith
#12. There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.
Alexander Smith
#13. I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
Alexander Smith
#14. 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.
Alexander Smith
#16. If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.
Alexander Smith
#17. To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,
just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.
Alexander Smith
#19. A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
Alexander Smith
#20. Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps.
Alexander Smith
#21. 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.
Alexander Smith
#22. It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.
Alexander Smith
#23. Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal liking.
Alexander Smith
#24. A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.
Alexander Smith
#26. One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.
Alexander Smith
#27. 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!
Alexander Smith
#28. Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo
from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at.
Alexander Smith
#29. There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
Alexander Smith
#30. Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it.
Alexander Smith
#31. The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in God and woman.
Alexander Smith
#32. Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
Alexander Smith
#33. The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
Alexander Smith
#34. 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
#35. 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 Smith
#36. If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
Alexander Smith
#37. 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 ...
Alexander Smith
#38. Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.
Alexander Smith
#40. My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable.
Alexander Smith
#42. To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
Alexander Smith
#43. The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
Alexander Smith
#44. 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.
Alexander Smith
#45. Good-humor and, generosity carry day with the popular heart all the world over.
Alexander Smith
#46. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
Alexander Smith
#48. A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.
Alexander Smith
#49. Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Alexander Smith
#50. 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.
Alexander Smith
#51. Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time
Is England. England!
Alexander Smith
#52. A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
Alexander Smith
#53. In winter, when the dismal rain
Comes down in slanting lines,
And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.
Alexander Smith
#54. I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
Alexander Smith
#55. 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.
Alexander Smith
#56. Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.
Alexander Smith
#57. 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.
Alexander Smith
#58. A great man is the man who does something for the first time.
Alexander Smith
#59. Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.
Alexander Smith
#60. Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
Alexander Smith
#61. Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles.
Alexander Smith
#62. We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold 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.
Alexander Smith
#63. 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.
Alexander Smith
#64. I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.
Alexander Smith
#65. We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.
Alexander Smith
#66. 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
#67. In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
Alexander Smith
#68. 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.
Alexander Smith
#70. Each time we love,We turn a nearer and a broader markTo that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.
Alexander Smith
#73. Memory is a mans real possession....in nothing else is he rich....in nothing else is he poor.
Alexander Smith
#74. 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 Smith
#76. Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
Alexander Smith
#77. In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.
Alexander Smith
#79. We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.
Alexander Smith
#81. Failure and success are not accidents, but the strictest justice.
Alexander Smith
#82. 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.
Alexander Smith
#83. How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.
Alexander Smith
#86. 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.
Alexander Smith
#87. We have two lives;
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.
Alexander Smith
#89. 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.
Alexander Smith
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