Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes & Sayings

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

All sweeping assertions are erroneous. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Affection is a habit. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I have no parting sigh to give, so take my parting smile. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

All profound truths startle you in the first announcement. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Marriage is like money - seem to want it, and you never get it. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Do anything but love; or if thou lovest and art a woman, hide thy love from him whom thou dost worship; never let him know how dear he is; flit like a bird before him; lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower; but be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird, when caught and caged, be left to pine neglected and perish in forgetfulness. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Politeness, however, acts the lady's maid to our thoughts; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — 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

Sneering springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be that wishes to take refuge in doubt. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

It is strange what society will endure from its idols. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

There can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Are we not like the actor of old times, who wore his mask so long his face took its likeness? — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Strange the affection which clings to inanimate objects - objects which cannot even know our love! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Confidence is its own security. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Alas! we give our own coloring to the actions of others. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Suicide and antipathy to fires in a bedroom seem to be among the national characteristics. Perhaps the same moral cause may originate both. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

All beginnings are very troublesome things ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

So much to win, so much to lose,
No marvel that I fear to choose. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

Childhood, whose very happiness is love. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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 ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Were it not better to forget than to remember and regret? — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings; solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Delicious tears! The heart's own dew. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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? — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A blossom full of promise is life's joy,
That never comes to fruit. Hope, for a time,
Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
And it looks flourishing
a little while
'T is pass'd, we know not whither, but 't is gone. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

True love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

Oh, no! my heart can never be
Again in lightest hopes the same;
The love that lingers there for thee
Hath more of ashes than of flame. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

Sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty; secondly, either that of admiration or fault-finding - the latter a very animated enjoyment. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The lover and the physician are each popular from the same cause - we talk to them of nothing but ourselves ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Business before pleasure ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Alas! the praise given to the ear
Ne'er was nor ne'er can be sincere. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A woman only can understand a woman ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The rich know not how hard it is to be of needful rest and needful food debarred. — 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

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

The fact is, that life is too short to be occupied by aught but the present - hope and remembrance are equally a waste of time. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

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

Were it not better to forget
Than but remember and regret — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Praise - actual personal praise - oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Youth is a season that has no repose. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning! — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

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

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

Habit is our idea of eternity. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Fame is bought by happiness. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Habit is a second nature, and what was at first pleasure, is next necessity. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

There is no existence so content as that whose present is engrossed by employment, and whose future is filled by some strong hope, the truth of which is never proved. Toil and illusion are the only secrets to make life tolerable ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

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

Ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favors of which we are ashamed. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Farewell's a bitter word to say. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

But ignorance is happiness,When young Hope is to show the way — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Distinction is purchased at the expense of sympathy — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The past is perpetual youth to the heart. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Hope is love's happiness, but not its life. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A friend is never alarmed for us in the right place. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Our first love-letter ... There is so much to be said, and which no words seems exactly to say - the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

To enjoy yourself is the easy method to give enjoyment to others ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others! — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Nothing is so fortunate for mankind as its diversity of opinion ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Anybody's applause is better than nobody's. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The truth is, we never make for others the allowance we make for ourselves; and we should deny even our own words, could we hear them spoken by another. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Travel is as much a passion as ambition or love. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Truly, a little love-making is a very pleasant thing ... — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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

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. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

No hour arrives so soon as the one we dread. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon