Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

Curiosity is its own suicide ...

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

Delicious tears! The heart's own dew.

Farewell's a bitter word to say.

Affection is a habit.

Who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?

We are ourselves our happiness.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

There is nothing so easy as to be wise for others; a species of prodigality, by-the-by - for such wisdom is wholly wasted.

In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbors are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.

Distinction is purchased at the expense of sympathy

The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye.

A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee.

To enjoy yourself is the easy method to give enjoyment to others ...

A woman's fame is the tomb of her happiness.

A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical ...

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

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!

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and the despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.

We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present.

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.

To the many, witticisms not only require to be explained, like riddles, but are also like new shoes, which people require to wear many times before they get accustomed to them.

Occupation is one great source of enjoyment. No man, properly occupied, was ever miserable ...

The fearless make their own way ...

Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows.

We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it.

Alas! we give our own coloring to the actions of others.

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

No hour arrives so soon as the one we dread.

Nothing but love can answer to love; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place: it is its own sweet want.

All beginnings are very troublesome things ...

Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past.

Travel is as much a passion as ambition or love.

He who seeks pleasure with reference to himself, not others, will ever find that pleasure is only another name for discontent.

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

Conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep ...

Of all false assertions that ever went into the world under the banner of a great name and the mail armor of a well-turned phrase, Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank sheet of paper appears to me among the most untrue.

Music is the language of some other state, born of memory. For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of some other world like music?

Truly, a little love-making is a very pleasant thing ...

Marriage is like money - seem to want it, and you never get it.

Youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.

My heart is its own grave!

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

How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.

The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may with equal truth be applied to the imagination - it is a good servant, but a bad master.

Anybody's applause is better than nobody's.

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.

Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened.

Words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element - the one by which all the others are swayed.

Alas! we makeA ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolvesLook down upon our slumbering acts.

I have no parting sigh to give, so take my parting smile.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

A friend is never alarmed for us in the right place.

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.

How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning!

That which is always within our reach, is always the last thing we take; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all.

Though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion!

One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy.

Charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfillment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.

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.

Knowledge is much like dust - it sticks to one, one does not know how.

Were it not better to forget
Than but remember and regret

The wind has a language, I would I could learn!
Sometimes 'tis soothing, and sometimes 'tis stern,
Sometimes it comes like a low sweet song,
And all things grow calm, as the sound floats along,
And the forest is lull'd by the dreamy strain,
And slumber sinks down on the wandering main,
And its crystal arms are folded in rest,
And the tall ship sleeps on its heaving breast.

Toil is the portion of day, as sleep is that of night; but if there be one hour of the twenty-four which has the life of day without its labor, and the rest of night without its slumber, it is the lovely and languid hour of twilight.

Doubts, like facts, are stubborn things.

I think hearts are very much like glasses. If they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time.

A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble.

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human.

I never cast a flower away,
A gift of one who car'd for me;
A flower
a faded flower,
But it was done reluctantly.

It is said that ridicule is the test of truth: it is never applied, but when we wish to deceive ourselves ...

Hope is love's happiness, but not its life.

Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.

Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test.

From religion ... they will learn the only true lesson of equality - the conviction that our destinies are not in our own hands; they will see that no situation in life is without its share of suffering; - and this perpetual reference to a higher power ought equally to teach the rich humility, and the poor devotion.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

But ignorance is happiness,When young Hope is to show the way

Ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favors of which we are ashamed.

Business before pleasure ...

To be rude is as good as being clever.

One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice - the severity of 'the ungentle craft' originates in its own want of success: they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over ...

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

It is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.

I can pass days
Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,
The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,
Each tree a natural harp,
each different leaf
A different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving.

Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean.

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.

Eyes that droop like summer flowers.

A woman only can understand a woman ...

Curiosity and courtesy are very often at variance.

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

Habit is our idea of eternity.

It is strange what society will endure from its idols.

I would give worlds, could I believe
One-half that is profess'd me;
Affection! could I think it Thee,
When Flattery has caress'd me.

If there be any one habit which more than another is the dry rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule.

I do not think that life has a suspense more sickening than that of expecting a letter which does not come.

All profound truths startle you in the first announcement.

It is curious how inseparable eating and kindness are with some people.

The dream on the pillow,
That flits with the day,
The leaf of the willow
A breath wears away;
The dust on the blossom,
The spray on the sea;
Ay,
ask thine own bosom
Are emblems of thee.