I can conceive no punishment so dreadful as keeping perpetual watch on our words, lest they betray what they mean to conceal ; to know no unguarded m… - Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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I can conceive no punishment so dreadful as keeping perpetual watch on our words, lest they betray what they mean to conceal ; to know no unguarded moment — no careless gaiety — to pine for the confidence which yet we dare not bestow — to tremble, lest that some hidden meaning lurk in a phrase which only our own sickly fancy could torture into bearing such — to have suspicion become a second nature — and to shrink every morning from the glad sunshine, for we know not what a day may bring forth : the wheel of Ixion were a tender mercy compared to such a state.

English
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About Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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.

Also Known As

Native Name: Letitia Landon
Alternative Names: L. E. L. Letitia Maclean Letitia Elizabeth Maclean Landon
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Additional quotes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

[Alvine] 'Tis one of those bright fictions that have made
The name of Greece only another word
For love and poetry ; with a green earth—
Groves of the graceful myrtle — summer skies,
Whose stars are mirror'd in ten thousand streams—
Winds that move but in perfume and in music,
And, more than all, the gift of woman's beauty.
What marvel that the earth, the sky, the sea,
Were filled with all those fine imaginings
That love creates, and that the lyre preserves !

It is the strangest problem of humanity — one too, for which the closest investigation can never quite account — to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime, are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered.

The city and the crowd unidealise love; and love, in the young warm heart of a girl, should be a dream apart from all commoner emotions — as sweet and as ethereal as the blush with which it is born and dies. Beauty gives its own gracefulness to love — there must be romance blended with the passion inspired by the very lovely face which the mirror reflected.

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