Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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But our bird knew not of the free blue air,
He had lived in his cage, and his home was there :
No flight had he in the green wood flown —
He pined not for freedom he never had known !
If he had lived amid leaf and bough
It had been cruel to fetter him now ;
For I have seen a poor bird die,
And all for love of his native sky.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Such as the lute, touch'd by no hand
Save by an angel's, wakes and weeps,
Such is the sound that now to land
From the charmed water sweeps.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I speak of my own feelings—I can judge
Of others but by outward show, and that
Is falser than the actor's studied part.
We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes:
The mind is as the face—for who goes forth
In public walks without a veil at least?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The desolate
Is doubly sorrowful when it recalls
It was not always desolate.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And Love is like the lightning in its might,
Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Praise — actual personal praise— oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The evil spirit of love left his soul for a moment, but returned, though with a strange and lurid aspect, bringing with him other and worse spirits than himself—hate, revenge, blood-thirstiness—all merged in and coloured by the excited and fanatic temper of the time.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
My spell is done, my prize is won ;
True love! thou hast equal none;
True love ! who could choose for thee
Gold or gems or vanity ?
Where is the spell whose charm will prove,
Like the spell of thy charm, true love ?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Cecil Forrester was heir to many misfortunes, being handsome, rich, high-born, and clever.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Deceit is this world's passport: who would dare,
However pure the breast, to lay it bare?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
What a mistake rage is ! anger should never go beyond a sneer, if it really desires revenge.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It is a fact not to be disputed, that the aristocracy have not "progressed " in proportion to the other classes. A young nobleman of the present day has not a better education than his ancestor in the time of Elizabeth.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Methinks we must have known some former state
More glorious than our present, and the heart
Is haunted with dim memories, shadows left
By past magnificence; and hence we pine
With vain aspirings, hopes that fill the eyes
With bitter tears for their own vanity.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I deeply swore
No lip should sigh where mine before
Had sealed its vow, no heart should rest
Upon the bosom mine had prest.
Life had no ill I would not brave
To claim him, even in the grave!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It is the strangest problem of humanity — one too, for which the closest investigation can never quite account — to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime, are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A thousand songs from a thousand boughs
The glad birds' pleasure declare ;
The rills are laughing in crystal light—
For the presence of Spring is there.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Selfishness is hypocritical by nature, and seizes on the first decent excuse as a cloak ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A great man does not leave behind him his genius, but its traces. Now, there is no disappointment so bitter as that whose cause is in ourselves.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Ridicule parts social life like an invisible paling ; and we are all of us afraid of the other. To this may be in great measure attributed the difference that exists between an author's writings and his conversation. The one is often sad and thoughtful, while the other is lively and careless. The fact is, that the real character is shown in the first instance, and the assumed in the second.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
If, even at three years old, we turn to the pleasures of memory, the less that is asserted about the felicity of childhood, the less there will be to dispute.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It shock'd me first to see the sun
Shine gladly o'er thy tomb;
To see the wild flowers o'er it run
In such luxuriant bloom.
Now I feel glad that they should keep
A bright sweet watch above thy sleep.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Are we not like that actor of old time,
Who wore his mask so long his face took
Its likeness?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Francesca's was a grievance of which most of her sex have to complain; a man's letter is always the most unsatisfactory thing in the world. There are none of those minute details which are such a solace to feminine anxiety; the mere fact of writing, always seems sufficient to content a masculine conscience.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh, she had yet the task to learn
How often woman's heart must turn
To feed upon its own excess
Of deep yet passionate tenderness!
How much of grief the heart must prove
That yields a sanctuary to love!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The Lake was that deep blue, which night
Wears in the zenith moon's full light;
With pebbles shining thro', like gems
Lighting sultana's diadems :

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How innocent, how beautiful thy sleep !
Sweet one, 'tis peace and joy to gaze on thee!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
THERE rests a shade above yon town,
A dark funereal shroud:
'Tis not the tempest hurrying down,
'Tis not a summer cloud.
The smoke that rises on the air
Is as a type and sign;
A shadow flung by the despair
Within those streets of thine.

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon