Alexander Smith

Poet

1830-12-31 – 1867-01-05

Alexander Smith was a Scottish poet and essayist associated with the Spasmodic school of Victorian poetry.

Quotes by Alexander Smith

If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
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The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
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The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
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In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
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If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.
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The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
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The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
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If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.
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If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
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Books are a finer world within the world.
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Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.
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Everything is sweetened by risk.
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Death takes away the commonplace of life.
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If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.
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Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
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Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings.
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We are never happy: we can only remember that we were so once.
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We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.
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A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
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Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
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