Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It was a summer evening; and the sea
Seem'd to rejoice in its tranquillity ;
Rolling its gentle waters to the west,
Till the rich crimson blush'd upon their breast,
Uniting lovingly the wave and sky,
Like Hope content in its delight to die.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
One moment he is at her knee,
So, Leila, wouldst thou weep for me ?
Started she, as at lightning gleam,—
O, Mirza, this I did not dream!
Moslem and Moor, may Spanish maid
Hearken such words as thou hast said?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I will not seek the battle-field —
The men I there should meet,
What have they done to me to make
Shedding their life-blood sweet ?
It is the veriest madness man
In maddest mood can frame,
To feed the earth with human gore,
And then to call it fame.
I have been wrong'd ; but were my wrong
The deadliest wrong ere done,
I would not slay my enemy,
But bid him still live on :—
And I should deem my vengeance more
Than the death-wound in strife—
What ills can death inflict like those
Heap'd on each hour of life ?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
In sooth, this earth is a lovely place;
Pass not in darkness over her face;
Yet call back thy words of doom—
They are too gay and too fair for the tomb.
....
And have seen—alas! 'tis but outward show—
The sunshine of yon green earth below:
Glad of rest must the wretched and way-worn be—
Angel of Death, they are ready for thee!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
O Memory ! noble power ! thy reign is here.
Strange destiny, how thus, from age to age,
Doth man complain of that which he has lost.
Still do departed years, each in their turn,
Seem treasures of happiness gone by:
And while mind, joyful in its far advance,
Plunges amid the future, still the Soul
Seems to regret some other ancient home
To which it is drawn closer by the past.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
She sleeps!—so sleeps the wretch beside the stake:
She sleeps!—how dreadful from such sleep to wake!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
He had a power; in his eye
There was a quenchless energy,
A spirit that could dare
The deadliest form that Death could take,
And dare it for the daring's sake.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A woman whose lover resigns her, and as if for her own sake, though without consulting her, is placed in a most awkward situation. What can she do ? Take him at his word ? That is easy to say, but hard to do, when all the hopes and affections are garnered in his love.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Awakening hope has named the name
Of love, or blown its spark to flame.
Restlessness, but as the winds range
From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower;
Changefulness, but as rainbows change,
From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.
Ay, well indeed may minstrel sing,—
What have the heart and year like spring?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I am a daughter of that land,
Where the poet's lip and the painter's hand
Are most divine, —where the earth and sky,
Are picture both and poetry—
I am of Florence.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Why, the very element of poetry is faith—faith in the beautiful, the divine, and the true.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I will look on the stars and look on thee,
and read the page of thy destiny.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'Tis not for Spring to think on all
The sear and waste of Autumn's fall: —

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The heart hath its mystery, and who may reveal it,
Or who ever read in the depths of their own? —
How much, we never may speak of, yet feel it,
But, even in feeling it, know it unknown!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'Tis strange with how much power and pride
The softness is of love allied.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A louder sweep the music gave :
The chieftain of the charmed wave,
Graceful upon his steed of snow,
Rises from his blue halls below ;
And rode he like a victor-knight
Thrice glorious in his arms of light.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Communication is in itself civilization; we wear away our own prejudices only by contact with those of others. We are forced into making allowances, by seeing how much we need that they should be made for ourselves.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Clara:
I will speak softly, till our gathered strength
Finds in its union voice. Ah, no delay !
The tyranny that dared to fetter wears
A midnight dagger.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How life effaces as it goes
The keenest pang of earlier woes.
How careless and how cold we grow,
Dry as the dust we tread below;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I cannot choose but marvel at the way
In which our lives pass on, from day to day
Learning strange lessons in the human heart,
And yet like shadows letting them depart.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There must be some deep-rooted anti-social principle in every man's nature, so dearly does he love aught that separates him from his kind ; or is it but one of the many shapes taken by that mental kaleidoscope, vanity, the varying and the glittering, the desire of distinction, sinking into that of notice?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The imagination, which is the source of poetry, has in every country been the beginning as well as the ornament of civilization. It civilizes because it refines.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Ah! love and song are but a dream,
A flower's faint shade on life's dark stream.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon