Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
" "Youth is frank, eager, and prone to believe in the good ; it looks round, and it sees flowers ; it looks up and sees stars ; evil appears impossible, because it does not seem to be in ourselves. It remains for after and weary years to teach us, that even the young and the innocent may be led into crime by the strong influence of temptation. Passion first, and interest afterwards, lures the feet of men into dark and crooked paths, which none in earlier and holier hours deemed they could tread. We may have been often deceived, but it is not until we ourselves begin to deceive that we dread deceit.
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.
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending,
Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now;
The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,—
Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow.
Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness
For ever man's penance and portion must be;
Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness?
Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee?
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
What a visionary thing is the independence of youth ! how full of projects, which take the shape of certainties ! How much of rugged and stern experience it requires to convince the young and the eager, that the efforts of an individual unaided by connexion or circumstance, are the true reading of the allegory of the Danaides : —industry and skill, alas, how often are they but water drawn with labour into a bucket full of holes !