Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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Resentment was a justice she owed to herself. There are some offenses which it is an unworthy weakness to forget.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I know a lovely little flower, a flower for which I pine —
I would go gather it, but bars my heavy hours confine;
Oh, grief, when free, how easily that little flower was mine !
...
Oh, were I sinking to the grave I often ask in vain,
And welcome Death stood by to loose the wasted captive's chain —
Ah, name me the Forget-me-not, I'd wake to life again!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Literary taste is often confounded with literary talent by others, quite as much as by ourselves.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Never day-beam hath shone o'er
Lovelier or wilder shore !
Half was land, and half was sea
Where the eye could only see
The blue sky for boundary.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How many glorious structures we had raised
Upon Hope's sandy basis!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
They say gravity is the centre of attraction ; I rather think that noise is. Nothing so soon assembles the inhabitants of a house as a loud and sudden noise : …

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Never, dear father, love can be,
Like the dear love I had for thee!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It is a gem which hath the power to show
If plighted lovers keep their faith or no :
If faithful, it is like the leaves of spring ;
If faithless, like those leaves when withering.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The huge dome of St. Paul's arose bathed in the moonlight, that giant fane of a giant city, a hundred spires were shining silvery in the soft gleam, and all meaner objects were touched with a picturesque obscurity: all around was silence and rest. The myriad voices of London were still, and nothing vexed the lulled ear of midnight.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Happiness ! pleasure I should rather say,
Happiness never made on earth a stay —

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Knowledge is much like dust — it sticks to one, one does not know how.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Light like the wan blue flames that wave
Their death-torch o'er the murderer's grave ;
And flickering shapes beset the way,
Watching in gloom to seize their prey,
Most terrible, for that the eye
Wander'd in dim uncertainty ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But these days
Of visible poetry have long been past!—
No fear that the young hunter may profane
The haunt of some immortal;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The first, the very first; oh! none
Can feel again as they have done;
In love, in war, in pride, in all
The planets of life's coronal,
However beautiful or bright,—
What can be like their first sweet light?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Life has little breathing time ; and, even when we do for a moment reflect, it is rather on our present than our past : the pains and pleasures of memory are put aside as quickly as the poem which celebrates them.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
From Minna after stabbing Pauline von Lindorf to death:
Yes, I have killed her at last. They thought I did not know her, but I did. She took away my father's heart from me, and would have taken away my husband's; but I have killed her at last.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
And say, that my castles are built but on sand ;
Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Yet gazed MANDALLA on the square
As she he sought still glided there,—
Oh that fond look, whose eyeballs' strain,
And will not know its look is vain!
At length he turned,—his silent mood
Sought that impassioned solitude,
The Eden of young hearts, when first
Love in its loneliness is nurst.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
This volume was written for children. Miss Landon set out its purpose in the preface.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We make ourselves our own distress,
We are ourselves our happiness.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Love is divine in our belief
Of its eternity — how vain,
When we have known that Love can die,
To think that he can live again !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It was a face, with nothing but the blush
To mark it from the sculptured features round :
As perfect in its beauty ; but the flush
Of earthly warmth and earthly feeling crowned
The master-piece of nature ;— that rich gush
Was from the heart, which thus a language found,
The eloquence of truth and silence ever : —
Words, sighs, and smiles deceive, but blushes never.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Remembrance makes the poet; 'tis the past
Lingering within him, with a keener sense
Than is upon the thoughts of common men
Of what has been, that fills the actual world
With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes,
That were and are not; and the fairer they,
The more their contrast with existing things,
The more his power, the greater is his grief.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
No other language than some soft sweet sounds
She had caught from the voices of the birds
When singing to the morning, and the notes
Sent from the waterfall, when, like a harp,
It held discourse in music with the wind.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And o'er them lowers destruction, high in air,
Upon those jutting crags, whose rugged sides,
Riven in fragments, and like ruins pil'd,
Seem as that giants of those ancient days
When earthborn creatures braved th' Olympic Gods,
Those of whom fable tells, had torn away
Rocks from their solid base, and with strong arm,
Parted the mountains: there the avalanche hangs,
Mighty, but tremulous; just a light breath
Will loosen it from off its airy throne;
Then down it hurls in wrath, like to the sound
Of thunder amid storms, or as the voice
Of rushing waters—death in its career.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
This mountain-ash, whose flower-fill'd boughs
Spread like a cloud at noon —
Whose shade is as a haunted place
For the sweet airs of June :
'Twas but a little shrub when first
I wreathed amid thy hair
Its berries, like the coral crown
That the sea-maidens wear.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Last night I by my casement leant,
And looked on the bright firmament;
And marked a group of stars, which met,
Almost as if on purpose set
Together for their loveliness, —

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But who e'er turned from beauty's ray
For fear of future shade;
Or who e'er flung a rose away
Because that rose might fade.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon