Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

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

Music moves us, and we know not why;
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
Is it the language of some other state,
Born of its memory ? For what can wake
The soul's strong instinct of another world,
Like music?

Never, dear father, love can be,
Like the dear love I had for thee!

Around his neck a ribbon clung,
Close to his heart a picture hung :
I saw the face — it was not mine ;
I saw, too, a small dagger shine,
A curious toy — you know the rest.

I've thought upon thy brow when Night
Threw o'er my pallet her summer moonlight,
And I have looked on the midnight sky
To catch the depth and light of thy eye ;
I painted from these and from memory,
For I could not paint when I looked on thee.

Well may storm be on the sky,
And the waters roll on high,
When MANMADIN passes by.
Earth below and heaven above
Well may bend to thee, oh Love!

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

In childhood, the impetus of conversation is curiosity. The child talks to ask questions. But one of its first lessons, as it advances, is that a question is an intrusion, and an answer a deceit.

How life effaces as it goes
The keenest pang of earlier woes.
How careless and how cold we grow,
Dry as the dust we tread below;

Oh! why should woman ever love,
Trusting to one false star above;
And fling her little chance away
Of sunshine for its treacherous ray.

A woman always exaggerates her beauty and its influence when they are past ; and it was a perpetual grief to think what her pretty face might have done for her.

But as our explanation will be more brief than one broken in upon by words of wonder, regret, and affection, we will proceed to it ; holding that explanation, like advice, should be of all convenient shortness.

Beautiful wreck! for still thy face,
Though changed, is very fair;
Like beauty's moonlight, left to shew
Her morning sun was there.

There is one conviction at which, though forced upon us by daily experience, we never arrive, namely, the conviction that Nobody in reality cares for Anybody; but this truth is so cold that we fence it out by all sorts of cloaks and coverings, delusions and devices.

I rather disdained than coveted the luxuries I saw : alas ! we desire riches more for others than ourselves.