Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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I'm weary, I'm weary. Oh! pleasure is pain
When its spell has been broken again and again.
I am weary of smiles that are bought and are sold,
I am weary of beauty whose fetters are gold,
I am weary of wealth—what makes it of me
But that which the basest and lowest might be?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And round the walls were Pictures : some calm scenes
Of Earth's green loveliness, and some whose hues
Were caught from faces in whose smile our life
Is one of Paradise ; and Statues, whose white grace
Is as a dream of poetry.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How much we give to thoughts and things our tone,
And judge of others' feelings by our own!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I left my home, and I was left
A stranger in his land, bereft
Of even hope; there was not one
Familiar face to look upon.—
Their speech was strange.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The loorie brought to his cinnamon nest.
The bee from the midst of its honey quest,
And open the leaves of the lotus lay
To welcome the noon of the summer day.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We again repeat, that there is no temper so communicative as an imaginative one.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
One rich light
Broke thro' the shadow of the tempest's wing,
While the black clouds, with gold and purple edged,
Caught every moment warmer hues, until
'Twas all one sparkling arch, and, like a king
In triumph o'er his foes, the Sun god sought
The blue depths of the sea ; — the waters yet
Were ruffled with the storm, and the white foam
Yet floated on the billows, while the wind
Murmured at times like to an angry child,
Who sobs even in his slumber.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I know not which is the most fatal gift,
Genius or Love, for both alike are ruled
By stars of bright aspect and evil influence.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
No one can deny—no one would think of denying—the vast benefit which literature has conferred on mankind; and with what ingratitude has it ever been received!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But the passion of jealousy cannot exist without the passion of love, and is like its parent, creative, impetuous, and credulous.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas!
We give our destiny from our own hands,
And trust to those most frail of all frail things,
The chances of humanity.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How strong is the love of the country in all indwellers of towns !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The influence of a woman's first love is felt on her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love—youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it for ever.—If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth—that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[Alvine] Oh, that sweet ring of graceful figures ! one
Flings her white arms on high, and gaily strikes
Her golden cymbals — I can almost deem
I hear their beatings; one with glancing feet
Follows her music, while her crimson cheek
Is flushed with exercise, till the red grape
'Mid the dark tresses of a sister nymph
Is scarcely brighter ; there another stands,
A darker spirit yet, with joyous brow,
And holding a rich goblet ;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We might have been! — these are but common words,
And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Where is the heart that has not bow'd
A slave, eternal Love, to thee:
Look on the cold, the gay, the proud,
And is there one among them free?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Indeed it is a doubtful fact whether clever people are ever very agreeable ; they are too much absorbed by one particular pursuit, to bound lightly enough over those generalities which are the stepping-stones of conversation ; they feel as if they ought to say something worth remembering.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
She was so changed, the soft carnation cloud
Once mantling o'er her cheek…
Had faded into paleness, broken by
Bright burning blushes, torches of the tomb.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
He loves not, he loves me, he loves me not,
He loves me, — yes, thou last leaf, yes,
I'll pluck thee not, for that last sweet guess!
" He loves me,

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
At present we avoid warfare — 'the good swords rust'; but we are not more peaceably disposed than our ancestors — look at the gauntlet to be run by a successful author. Ingenuity is racked for abuse, and language for its expression: everybody takes his success as personal affront. I think the late invention of steel pens quite characteristic of the age.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
He leapt upon his steed, and like the wind
They speed them on ; at first his giddy brain
Swam like a chaos— mystery of the mind
Which would guide its own workings, but in vain :

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Thou shalt bid thy fair hands rove
O'er thy soft lute's silver slumbers,
Waking sounds; of song and love
In their sweet Italian numbers.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
They say women are more constant than men : it is the constancy of circumstance ; the enterprise, the exertion required of men continually force them out of themselves, and that which was at first necessity soon becomes habit — whereas the constant round of employments in which a woman is engaged requires no fatigue of mind or body; the needle is, generally speaking, both her occupation and amusement, and this kind of work leaves the ideas full play ; hence the imagination is left at liberty to dwell upon one subject, and hence habit, which is an advantage on the one side, becomes to her an additional rivet.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[Before]
Just two or three sweet chords, that seemed
An echo of thy tone,—
The cushat's song was on the wind
And mingled with thine own.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is a steep and lofty wall,
Where my warders trembling stand,
He who at speed shall ride round its height,
For him shall be my hand.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Another soft and scented page,
Fill'd with more honied words !
What motives to a pilgrimage
A shrine like mine affords !
I know, before I break the seal,
The words that I shall find:—

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
How wild I may not say,
One long and breathless clasp, and then
As life were past away.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It is the mistake of a coxcomb, whose experience of affection is all to come—if it ever comes—to say that women are won by mere good looks. Though it does not owe its birth to them. Gratitude and Vanity are the nurses that rock the cradle of Love.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Spirit of the midnight dream,
What is now upon thy wing ?
Earth sleeps in the moonlight beam ;
O'er that sleep what wilt thou fling ?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon