Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

British poet and novelist (1802–1838)

Add quote

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (August 14, 1802 – October 15, 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L. E. L. She was one of the richest sources of epigrams in the early nineteenth century and one reviewer compared her to Rochefoucauld. Sometimes she adopts an adversarial role, giving contradictory viewpoints. Some of her thoughts recur, either developed or refined, but over time she also threw out differing opinions on some subjects; changeability, she argues, is one of our principal traits and, as she has one character remark, truth is like the philosopher's stone, a thing not to be discovered.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: L.E.L. • Iole

Native Name: Letitia Landon

Alternative Names: L. E. L. • Letitia Maclean • Letitia Elizabeth Maclean • Landon

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

—for earth were too like heaven,
If length of life to love were given.

There is a well of melancholy poetry in every human bosom. We have all mourned over the destroyed illusion and the betrayed hope. We have quarrelled in some embittered moment with an early friend, and when too late lamented the estrangement.

But the tyranny of custom, like all other tyrannies, when grown quite unbearable—for it is wonderful what people will endure-;had already sown the seeds of its own dissolution. Out of the hardship had grown the repining, and to repine at the exercise of an alleged right is soon to question its authority, and the first question asked shakes the whole ancient and time-honoured fabric of privilege.

The bride was young and beautiful, the bridegroom stern and old,—
But the silken rein was hung with pearls, the housings bright with gold.

{of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life !

Courage is like an angel at my heart !

Look on yon child, it droops the head,
Its knees are bow'd with pain;
It mutters from its wretched bed,
"Oh, let me sleep again!"
Alas! 'tis time, the mother's eyes
Turn mournfully away;
Alas! 'tis time, the child must rise,
And yet it is not day.

I had lost of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it supportable.

He enter'd now the garden, and a fall
Of singing, voice and lute, sank on his ear :
At first it seem'd thrice sweet and musical,
But it grew sadder as he came more near.

In this consists the difference between painting and poetry : the painter reproduces others, — the poet reproduces himself.

Experience has rude lessons, and we grow
Like what we have been taught too late to know,
And yet we hate ourselves for being so.

The voyage appeared short, for I had nothing to anticipate.

[From Lee, a dramatist]: Ah! the poet hath no true hope, who doth not place it in the many, and in the feeling of the common multitude.

But song has touch'd my lips with fire,
And made my heart a shrine;
For what, although alloy'd, debased,
Is in itself divine.

Statues to whose rest seem'd given
Not the life of earth but heaven ;
For each statue here enshrined
What in the immortal mind
Makes its beauty and its power —
Genius's eternal dower :