Alexander Smith
I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.Collection: Memorial
The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in God and woman.Collection: Sad
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.Collection: Love
I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.Collection: History
How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.Collection: Gardening
Christmas is the day that holds all time together.Collection: Christmas
Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.Collection: Nature
A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
Everything is sweetened by risk.
If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.
We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.
A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
A great man is the man who does something for the first time.
If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal liking.
To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.
Books are a finer world within the world.
Trees are your best antiques.
To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.
There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.Collection: Morning
A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.Collection: Men
If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.Collection: Death
A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.Collection: May
It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.Collection: Gone
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.Collection: Flower
Trees are your best antiquesCollection: Nature
It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.Collection: Memorable
There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.Collection: Grandchildren
Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it.Collection: Time
Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.Collection: Memories
If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.Collection: Men
In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.Collection: Autumn
Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.Collection: Phrases
In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.Collection: Garden
The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Flower
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.... So are flying twinges of gout, shortness of breath on the hill-side, the fact that even the moderate use of your friend's wines at dinner upsets you. These things are disagreeable because they tell you that you are no longer young—that you have passed through youth, are now in middle age, and faring onward to the shadows in which, somewhere, a grave is hid.Collection: Morning
The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide.Collection: Beach