Letitia Elizabeth Landon - Life Quotes

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Death has most awful lessons ! It is sad,
Aye, strange, to see even the aged die ;
But about youth there is a confidence
In life, that makes it terrible.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
It is Rome's secret charm to reconcile
Imagination with our long last sleep.
We are resign'd ourselves, and suffer less
For those we love. The people of the South
Paint closing life in hues less terrible
Than do the gloomy nations of the North :
The sun, like glory, even warms the grave.

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
Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A letter then, breathing of home and affection, is a treasure ; it is like a memento from the dead, for absence is as death in all but that its resurrection is in this life.

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
Can loveliness lose its power ? Ah, yes ! when love can lose its truth. Weak and impetuous, yielding to temptation, but trembling to enjoy the reward of the committed crime ; such is the man of whom my heart made its divinity, — for whose sake I would have toiled as a slave; ay, and do ; but with far other aim now. Let us but once meet again, Jehanghire, and thou art mine ! but I — I can never be thine again. Life, throne, fortunes, we will yet share together ; but my heart, never, never more !

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A great change in life is like a cold bath in winter — we all hesitate at the first plunge.

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
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
Curious it is that every hour of our day is repeated from myriad chimes; and yet how rarely do we attend to the clock striking! Alas! how emblematic is this of the way in which we neglect the many signs of time! How terrible, when we think of what time may achieve, is the manner in which we waste it! At the end of every man's life, at least three-quarters of the mighty element of which that life was composed will be found void—lost—nay, utterly forgotten! And yet that time, laboured and husbanded, might have built palaces, gathered wealth, and, still greater, made an imperishable name.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The first, the very first; oh! none
Can feel again as they have done;
In love, in war, in pride, in all
The planets of life's coronal,
However beautiful or bright,—
What can be like their first sweet light?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The poor child, as Charles Lamb so touchingly expresses it, is not brought, but "dragged out," and if the wits are sharpened, so, too, is the soft, round cheek. The crippled limb and broken constitution attest the effects of the over-early struggle with penury; but the child of rich parents suffers, though in another way; there is the heart that is crippled, by the selfishness of indulgence and the habit of relying upon others. It takes years of harsh contact with the realities of life to undo the enervating work of a spoilt and over aided childhood. We cannot too soon learn the strong and useful lessons of exertion and self-dependance.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
And this is woman's fate:
All her affections are called into life
By winning flatteries, and then thrown back
Upon themselves to perish; and her heart,
Her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness,
Is left to bleed or break!

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

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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Let music make less terrible
The silence of the dead;
I care not, so my spirit last
Long after life has fled.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Strength, power, and majesty, belong to man ;
They make the glory native to his life ;
But sweetness is a woman's attribute —
By that she has reigned, and by that will reign.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Happiness is not for this world — a conviction that cannot be too soon acquired : it will destroy a thousand vain expectations, dissipate the most perplexing of our illusions — the early knowledge that life is but a trial, whose triumph is hereafter, and this earth a place appointed for that sorrow and patient endurance which is gradually fitting us for a better and a happier state.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I am persuaded there is no triumph equal to one achieved on the stage—it comes so immediate and so home : you have before you the mass of human beings whose sympathies are at your will; you witness the emotions which you raise, you see the tears which you command : the poet has erected the statue, but it is for you to give it life—the words must find their music on your lips—the generous sentiment, the exalted hope, the touches of deep feeling, ask their expression from you : surely such influence is among the triumphs of the mind, ay and a great and noble triumph.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh, there are evil moments in our life,
When but a thought, a word, a look, has power
To dash the cup of happiness aside,
And stamp us wretched!

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
'Twas as she hoped, — he sleeps ; and now
Her lips are on his throbbing brow,
Sucking the poison forth : 't was bliss
To know she gave her life for his.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
—for earth were too like heaven,
If length of life to love were given.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon