Were it not better to forget than to remember and regret?
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Regret
Time is the great comforter of grief, but the agency by which it works is exhaustion.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Grief
It is very pleasant to follow one’s inclinations; but unfortunately, we cannot follow them all: they are like the teeth sown by Cadmus—they spring up, get in each other’s way, and fight.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Praise
We speak of hope; but is not hope only a more gentle name for fear.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Hope
Habits are the petrefaction of feelings.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Habit
Alas, we make a ladder of our thoughts, where angels step, but sleep ourselves at the foot; our high resolves look down upon our slumbering acts.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Thought
Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Enjoyment
How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Disappointment
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?
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Music
Happiness is like the statue of Isis, whose veil no mortal ever raised.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Happiness
I frankly confess I have a respect for family pride.—If it be a prejudice, it is prejudice in its most picturesque shape.—But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Pride
Ah tell me not that memory sheds gladness over the past; what is recalled by faded flowers save that they did not last?
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Remembrance
What mockeries are our most firm resolves.—To will is ours, but not to execute. We map our future like some unknown coast, and say here is a harbor, there a rock; the one we will attain, the other shun, and we do neither; some chance gale springs up, and bears us far o’er some unfathomed sea.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Quotations, Light
Hard are life’s early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold and despair.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Youth
Half the noblest passages in poetry are truisms; but these truisms are the great truths of humanity; and he is the true poet who draws them from their fountains in elemental purity, and gives us to drink.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Circumstances form the character; but like petrifying waters they harden while they form.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Music
We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Suffering
Half our forebodings of our neighbors, are but our wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
O love! thine essence is thy purity! Breathe one unhallowed breath upon thy flame and it is gone forever, and but leaves a sullied vase,—its pure light lost in shame.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Love
Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings. We pity, but do not enter into the grief which we have never felt.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Sympathy
The powers of Time as a comforter can hardly be overstated; but the agency by which he works is exhaustion.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Few save the poor feel for the poor.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Poverty
It is the inevitable end of guilt that it places its own punishment on a chance which is sure to occur.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Guilt
No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Busy, Occupation, Happiness
There is in life no blessing like affection; it soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues, and bringeth down to earth its native heaven: life has nought else that may supply its place.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Affection
Occupation is one great source of enjoyment. No man, properly occupied, was ever miserable.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Employment
Charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfilment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Topics: Charity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu English Aristocrat, Poet
- Pamela Hansford Johnson English Novelist
- Anne Bradstreet American Poet
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning English Poet
- Christina Rossetti English Poet
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- Jane Austen English Novelist
- Mary Webb English Novelist
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton British Author, Politician
- Philip Larkin English Poet
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