Quotes by Alexander Smith
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A great man is the man who does something for the first time.
We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.
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.
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.
Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal liking.
The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
Books are a finer world within the world.
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Everything is sweetened by risk.
The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.
The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.
A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
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.
I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
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.
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.
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