Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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Assuredly, meeting after absence, is one of — ah, no! — it is life's most delicious feeling.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Did we not know this world to be but a place of trial — our bitter probation for another and for a better — how strange in its severity would seem the lot of genius in a woman. The keen feeling — the generous enthusiasm — the lofty aspiration — and the delicate perception — are given but to make the possessor unfitted for her actual position.

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
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
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
'Tis May again, another May,
Looking as if it meant to stay ;
So many are its thousand flowers,
So glorious are its sunny hours,
So green its earth, so blue its sky,
As made for Hope's eternity.

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
Many a heart is caught in the rebound... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh, love is timid in its birth!
Watching her lightest look or stir,
As he but look'd and breathed with her.
Gay words were passing, but he leant
In silence; yet, one quick glance sent,—
His secret is no more his own,
When has woman her power not known?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Three hackney-coaches, and two women in patterns passed by; also a man with an umbrella dripping, which he held rather over a brown paper parcel than himself: at last, a bright spot appeared just above the palace, the rain seemed to melt into luminous streaks on the sky, and the rain-drops that had sprinkled all over the panes of glass began to gather into two or three large drops, and to descend slowly along the surface. They would have done to bet upon, but there was no one to bet with.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Human nature is accused of much more selfishness than it really has ; a thousand kindly emotions break in upon and redeem our daily and interested life.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And all o'er heaven is that clear blue
The stars so love to wander through.
They're rising from the silent deep,
Like bright eyes opening after sleep.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
They say that, hung in ancient halls,
At midnight from the silent lute
A melancholy music falls
From chords which were by daylight mute.
And so the human heart by night
Is touched by some inspired tone,
Harmonious in the deep delight,
By day it knew not was its own.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending,
Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now;
The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,—
Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow.
Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness
For ever man's penance and portion must be;
Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness?
Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
What we may do
To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
We may have said but yesterday some word
Which may not be recalled.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
My heart is with thee, Iove ! though now
Thou'rt far away from me :
I envy even my own thoughts,
For they may fly to thee.

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
But lonely all, as if she pined
For somewhat of companionship,
And felt it was in vain she shined:
Earth is her mirror, and the stars
Are as the court around her throne;
She is a beauty and a queen;
But what is this? she is alone.

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
How I pity those whose childhood has been unhappy! to them one of the sweetest springs of feeling has been utterly denied, the most green and beautiful part of life laid waste.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I always wish, in reading my favourite poets, to know what first suggested my favourite poems. Few things would be more interesting than to know under what circumstances they were composed, — how much of individual sentiment there was in each, or how, on some incident seemingly even opposed, they had contrived to ingraft their own associations. What a history of the heart would such annals reveal ! Every poem is in itself an impulse.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The future! ah, there hath the spirit its home,
In its distance is written the glorious to come.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Gentlest one, I bow to thee,
Rose-lipp'd queen of poesy,
Sweet Erato, thou whose chords
Waken but for love-touched words !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon