"Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid."
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Quote collection
Alexander Smith quotes (page 4 of 6)
102 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past."
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"Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all."
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"It is the sternest philosophy, but on the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena of the world, failure and success are not accidents, as we so frequently suppose, but the strictest justice."
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"There is a certain even-handed justice in Time; and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul."
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"The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him."
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"To-day is always different from yesterday."
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"Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears."
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"An old novel has a history of its own."
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"Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural."
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"Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past."
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"Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!"
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"Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides."
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"The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing."
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"We have two lives; The soul of man is like the rolling world, One half in day, the other dipt in night; The one has music and the flying cloud, The other, silence and the wakeful stars."
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"Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either."
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"A poem round and perfect as a star."
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"Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)"
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"My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars."
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"My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest."
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