Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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They built a temple for the God,
'Twas in a myrtle grove,
Where the bee and the butterfly
Vied for each blossom's love.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Her likeness ! why it is a vain endeavour
To image it. Painting or words may never
Say what she was ; yet dwell I on the task,
As if that Poesy had a right to ask
From Memory its treasure.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
God ! that this Earth should be so beautiful,
And yet so wretched !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Who cares for a general compliment more than a general lover.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas! that every lovely thing
Lives only but for withering,—
That spring rainbows and summer shine
End but in autumn's pale decline.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas, the strange varieties or life !
We live 'mid perils and pleasures, like
Characters 'graven on the sand, or hues
Colouring the rainbow. Wild as a sick fancy
And changeful as a maiden, is this dream,
This brief dream on earth - - - -

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
To what may youth's first joyance be compared ?
To daylight, and the glad song of the lark
Bursting together, — to a sudden gush
Of perfume, till the giddy senses link
With overmuch delight,— a dream,— a tale
Of Paradise, told in fair poesy.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Death's a fearful thing when we must count its steps!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy.... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas! when angry words begin
Their entrance on the lip to win;
When sullen eye and flushing cheek
Say more than bitterest tone could speak;
And look and word, than fire or steel,
Give wounds more deep,—time cannot heal;
And anger digs, with tauntings vain,
A gulf it may not pass again.

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
It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Experience teaches, it is true; but she never teaches in time.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Literature soon becomes a power, not what it once was, a passion; but literary success, like all others, is only to be obtained, and retained, by labour — and labour and inclination do not always go together. Take all our most eminent writers, and the quantity of work, hard work, they have got through, will be found enormous and perpetual. Literature, as a profession, allows little leisure, and less indulgence.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I held that Love
Which chooseth from a thousand only one,
To be the object of that tenderness
Natural to every heart; which can resign
Its own best happiness for one dear sake;
Can bear with absence; hath no part in Hope,—
For Hope is somewhat selfish, Love is not,—
And doth prefer another to itself.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The earth was parched, the trees were sear'd,
And blasted every branch appear'd;
At one end yawned a gloomy cave,
Black, as its mouth were that of the grave;
And dark, as if the waters of death
Were in its depths, rose a well beneath.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I Did Not Choose My Gift:—too soon my heart,
Watch-like, had pointed to a later hour
Than Time Had Reach'd: and as my years pass'd on,
Shadows and floating visions grew to thoughts,
And thoughts found words, the passionate words of song,
And all to me was poetry.

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
It is a night of summer,—and the sea
Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
She'll only know the name?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Yet, wake again, I pray thee, wake;
My soul yet lives upon the chords —
My heart must breathe its wrongs, or break :
Yet can it find relief in words !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
You may find many a brighter one
Than your own rose, but there are none
So true to thee, Love.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I hate the word 'ought' — it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
O ! the heart has all too many tears ;
But none are like those that wait
On the blighted love, the loneliness
Of the young orphan's fate.

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon