Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

Alas! for him whose youthful fire
Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,—
Alas! for him who shall essay,
The laurel's long and dreary way!
Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says.

Oh! frail are the many links that are
In the chain of affection's tender care,

A London day requires to be well aired before it is ventured into.

Nothing discourages a child so much as the impossibility of pleasing.

There is a favourite in every family; and, generally speaking, that favourite is the most troublesome member in it.

By-the-by, this doctrine of perpetual transmigration would be a curious plea to urge for the non-fulfilment of former engagements ; seven years is I believe the term allotted for the entire change. Now, might not a man encumbered with debt plead at the expiration of the period in the Courts of Westminster, that he was not the person who actually contracted those debts ? Or might not an inconstant couple sue for a divorce, on the plea that neither were the individuals who originally married ?

Life is a torrid day,
Parched with the dust and sun ;
And death's the calm cool night,
When the weary day is done.

Upon the sunny grass-plot stood the dial,
Whose measured time strange contrast with ours made :
Ah ! was it omen of life's after trial,
That even then the hours were told in shade,
In the old, old times,
The dear old times ?

All the fairest things of earth,
Art's creations have their birth —
Still from love and death.

I always wish, in reading my favourite poets, to know what first suggested my favourite poems. Few things would be more interesting than to know under what circumstances they were composed, — how much of individual sentiment there was in each, or how, on some incident seemingly even opposed, they had contrived to ingraft their own associations. What a history of the heart would such annals reveal ! Every poem is in itself an impulse.

Then rose those deadlier sounds that tell
When foes meet hand to hand,— The shout, the yell, the iron clang
Of meeting spear and brand.

The cold north wind which bows to earth
The lightness of the willow's birth
Bends not the mountain cedar trees;
Folding their branches from the breeze,
They stand as if they could defy
The utmost rage of storm and sky.

'T was night, but night which the imperial moon,
Regal in her full beauty, turn'd to noon,
But still the noon of midnight; though the ray
Was clear and bright, it was not that of day;

(of names) Literary godfathers and godmothers, like those in real life, have much to answer for, on the score of the inappropriate.

Another year, another year,—
Alas! and must it be
That Time's most dark and weary wheel
Must turn again for me?