Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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What is the reason that we find it so satisfactory to make excuses to ourselves—the only persons in the world to whom they must be altogether needless?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The fair face painted on the dungeon air,
By the strong force of hope, distinct and sweet,
Is a good omen. Love mine, I will rest.
If my last sleep — it will be full of thee.

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
The field is fought—who walketh there?—
The shadow victory casts—Despair!

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
From Lee, a dramatist:
Ah! the poet hath no true hope, who doth not place it in the many, and in the feeling of the common multitude.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Statues but known from shapes of the earth,
By being too lovely for mortal birth;
Paintings whose colours of life were caught
From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought;
Music whose sighs had a spell like those
That float on the sea at the evening's close
Language so silvery, that every word
Was like the lute's awakening chord;

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The woman was in abject misery—that worst of poverty, which is haunted by shame—the only relic left by better days. She shrunk from all efforts at recovery, refused to administer the medicines, and spoke of the child's death but as a blessing.
My God! and is the daily page of life
Darken'd with wretchedness like this?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'Tis this which makes
The best assurance of our promised heaven:
This triumph intellect has over death—
Our words yet live on others' lips; our thoughts
Actuate others. Can that man be dead
Whose spiritual influence is upon his kind?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I do firmly believe that the Londoner is as contented with his city home as the dweller in the fairest valley among the Appennines ; and that habit brings its usual indifference as to place.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Thou, Poetry, in absence wert a chain,
Binding our hearts together: where so well
As in thy numbers, could I pour my soul,
In soothing tenderness? 'twas bliss, to make
Thought visible to those of whom I thought.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Where do purple bubbles swim,
But upon the goblet's brim ?
Drink not deep, howe'er it glow
Sparkles never lie below.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
[After]
Burnt to the dust, an ashy heap
Was every cottage round;—
I listened, but I could not hear
One single human sound:

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Those sweet, vague sounds are on the air,
Half sleep, half song—half false, half true,
As if the wind that brought them there
Had touched them with its music too.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There are remembrances that will not vanish,—
Thoughts of the past we would but cannot banish:
As if to show how impotent mere will,
We loathe the pang, and yet must suffer still:
For who is there can say they will forget?
—It is a power no science teaches yet.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
{of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Mysterious enthusiasm, Love !
The heart's supremest power;—which doth combine
Within itself religion, poetry,
And heroism.

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
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
Oh, glory of the morning!
Oh, ye gifted, young, and brave!
What end have ye, but midnight;
What find ye but the grave ?

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
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 so sad —
So very lonely — to be the sole one
In whom there is a sign of change!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
He knelt him down on the new-raised mound,
His face was bowed on the cold damp ground,
He raised his head, his tears were done,
The father had prayed o'er his only son!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Now, a fancy ball is bad enough in London, where milliners are many, and where theatres have costumes that may be borrowed or copied ; but in the country, where people are left to their own devices—truly to them may be applied the old poet's account of murderers, "their fancies are all frightful.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon