Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"[From Lord Norbourne]: I do not often give advice ; first, because it is a bad habit that of giving any thing ; and, secondly, because I always think of the ambassador’s answer to Oliver's declaration, 'that if the court of Spain cut off his head, he would send them the heads of every Spaniard in his dominions.’ 'Yes, please your highness,' returned the diplomatist, 'but among them all there may not be one to fit my shoulders.' In like manner, with all our choice of other people’s experience, there is never any that suits us but our own."

"Green trees and blue skies are very well in their way ; I believe indispensable to painters, and useful to poets :"

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Statesmen and philosophers too, often talk a great deal of nonsense. Half of what are called our finest sentiments originate in the necessity of rounding a sentence."

"Love is a thing of frail and delicate growth ; Soon checked, soon fostered ; feeble, and yet strong : It will endure much, suffer long, and bear What would weigh down an angel's wing to earth, And yet mount heavenward ; but not the less It dieth of a word, a look, a thought ; And when it dies, it dies without a sign To tell how fair it was in happier hours ; It leaves behind reproaches and regrets. And bitterness within affection's well, For which there is no healing."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Wit only gains you the reputation of being hardhearted, which it is very well to be in reality, but not to have the reputation of being. It shocks people's little innocent prejudices, and these I always respect when I can. Indeed, the only character I ever found of any use to man, was that of having no character at all."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Youth is prone to admire ; but it is odd how, in a few years, we discover the defects of our demigods."

"[PS to a Lady Marchmont letter]: Lord Marchmont, whenever he sees me writing, sends you a message of equal length and civility. Once named, it will do for always. You can keep it by you like a stock of frozen provision."

"This is one of the most unpleasant lessons that experience gives; and one, moreover, that it is perpetually giving; namely, that what we fancied was liking for ourselves, was in reality, the result of , calculation, or of amusement. We fancied we were liked, when we were only useful or entertaining."

"Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, Men would behold its threshold, and despair."

"A great sorrow forgets every thing but itself; but little sorrows exaggerate themselves and each other."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague within Lady Marchmont’s letters]: All men are rascals to women, and all women rascals to each other."

"How much of change lies in a little space ! How soon the spirits leave their youth behind ! The early green forsakes the bough ; the flowers, Nature's more fairy-like and fragile ones, Droop on the way-side, and the later leaves Have artifice and culture — so the heart : How soon its soft spring hours take darker hues ! And hopes, that were like rainbows, melt in shade ; While the fair future, ah ! how fair it seemed ! Grows dark and actual."

"Life's best gifts are bought dearly. Wealth is won By years of toil, and often comes too late: With pleasure comes satiety ; and pomp Is compassed round with vexing vanities : And genius, earth's most glorious gift, that lasts When all beside is perished in the dust— How bitter is the suffering it endures ! How dark the penalty that it exacts !"

"No two people are more different in outward seeming, than a man sometimes grows to differ from himself."

"... I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is prejudice in its most picturesque shape ; but I hold that it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature."

"Existence is full of strange contrasts. The wheel of life whirls round, and leaves us scarcely time to know where we are before we find ourselves in a totally different position. The material is always much the same,—pride, vanity, deceit, and selfishness ; but it is worked up into very different shapes."

"Vanity ! guiding power, 'tis thine to rule Statesman and vestryman—the knave or fool. The Macedonian crossed Hydaspes' wave, Fierce as the storm, and gloomy as the grave. Urged by the thought, what would Athenians say, When next they gathered on a market-day ? And the same spirit that induced his toil, Leads on the cook, to stew, and roast, and boil : Whether the spice be mixed—the flag unfurled— Each deems their task the glory of the world."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s Letters to Sir Jasper]: What a duty to one's self it is to be young, vain, and pretty ! but the middle quality is the most important. Vanity is a cloak that wraps us up comfortably, and a drapery which sets us off to the best advantage ; and its great merit is, that it suits itself to every sort of circumstance."

"[From Lady Marchmont’s Letters to Sir Jasper]: Chloe believed that he had immortalised himself by a representation of the war of the Titans against the gods. Unfortunately, they were higher than even the room ; and Lord Marchmont refused to comply with the wishes of the artiste, and to take down his splendidly painted ceiling to admit of the dessert."

"Still, it must be confessed, that when the sad-coloured satin was arranged in rich folds, and the Mechlin lace (it was a little fortune in itself) hung to her satisfaction, she looked as perfect a specimen of an old lady as England could have produced."

"There is to age something so enlivening in the company of youth, unconsciously it shares the cheerfulness it witnesses, and hopes with the hopes around, in that sympathy which is the kindliest part of our nature."

"[From Walter Maynard]: Poetry is the immortality of earth : where shall we look for our noblest thoughts, and our tenderest feelings, but in its eternal pages ?"

"[Of poets]: They gather from sorrow its sweetest emotions ; they repeat of hope but its noblest visions; they look on nature with an earnest love, which wins the power of making her hidden beauty visible; and they reproduce the passionate, the true, and the beautiful. Alas ! they themselves are not what they paint; the low want subdues the lofty will ; the small and present vanity interferes with the far and glorious aim : but still it is something to have looked beyond the common sphere where they were fated to struggle. They paid in themselves the bitter penalty of not realising their own ideal ; but mankind have to be thankful for the generous legacy of thought and harmony bequeathed by those who were among earth's proscribed and miserable. Fame is bought by happiness."

"[From Lady Marchmont]: Vanity is the real lever with which Archimedes said he could move the earth ;"

"Which was the true philosopher ?—the sage Who to the sorrows and the crimes of life Gave tears—or he who laughed at all he saw ?"

"Fear dwells around the absent—and our love For such grows all too anxious, too much filled With vain regrets, and fond inquietudes : We know not love till those we love depart."

"O ! never another dream can be Like that early dream of ours, When the fairy, Hope, lay down like a child, And slept amid opening flowers."

"[From Henrietta]: A man in love is a nonentity for the time—he is nothing ; and nature, that is, my nature, abhors a vacuum."

"But there is something in parting that softens the heart;—it is as if we had never felt how unutterably dear a beloved object could be, till we are about to lose it for ever."

"He was of those whose sensitive organisation, and inborn talent, constitute that genius which holds ordinary maxims at defiance. No education can confer—no circumstances check it; and even to account for it, we need, with the ancients, to believe in inspiration."

"We do not know how much we love, Until we come to leave ; An aged tree, a common flower, Are things o'er which we grieve."

"Is not the lark companion of the spring? And should not Hope — that sky-lark of the heart— Bear, with her sunny song, youth company ?"

"Farewell's a bitter word to say."

"It (London) is the most real place in the world ; you will inevitably be brought to your level."

"There are in existence two periods when we shrink from any great vicissitude—early youth and old age. In the middle of life, we are indifferent to change ; for we have discovered that nothing is, in the end, so good or so bad as it at first appeared. We know, moreover, how to accommodate ourselves to circumstances ; and enough of exertion is still left in us to cope with the event. But age is heart-wearied and tempest-torn : it is the crumbling cenotaph of fear and hope ! Wherefore should there be turmoil for the few, and evening hours, when all they covet is repose ? They see their shadow fall upon the grave ; and need but to be at rest beneath! Youth is not less averse from change ; but that is from exaggeration of its consequences, for all seems to the young so important, and so fatal. They are timid, because they know not what they fear; hopeful, because they know not what they expect. Despite their gayety of confidence, they yet dread the first plunge into life's unfathomed deep."

"Who, in after life, can help smiling at the fancies in which early anticipation revelled ; how absurd, how impossible, do they not now appear! Yet, in such mockery lurks much of bitterness : the laugh rings hollow from many a disappointment, and many a mortification."

"Who shall place a bound to human folly, when both the inflicter and the endurer of torture have deemed that pain is acceptable in the sight of God ?"

"[From Sir Jasper Meredith]: Human enjoyment is all too dearly atoned."

"... what is life. A gulf of troubled waters—where the soul, Like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves, Of pain and pleasure, by the wavering breath Of passions."

"[From Sir Jasper]: I like a cat because it does not disguise its selfishness with any flattering hypocrisies. Its attachment is not to yourself, but to your house. Let it but have food, and a warm lair among the embers, and it heeds not at whose expense. Then it has the spirit to resent aggression. You shall beat your dog, and he will fawn upon you; but a cat never forgives : it has no tender mercies, and it torments before it destroys its prey."

"Methinks that we have known some former state More glorious than our present; and the heart Is haunted by dim memories—shadows left By past felicity."

"I believe that one great reason why the suffering of the mind is so often followed by suffering of the body is, that we are so indifferent about it, that we do not care to take even those ordinary precautions which are taken almost unconsciously in general. There is nothing in life worth attention, not even ourselves."

"Change is the universal prescription for a wounded spirit. " It will do you so much good," is the constant remark. Perhaps it may; but how reluctant is any one who is suffering mentally, to try it! There is an irritation about secret and subdued sorrow, which peculiarly unfits you for exertion ; you are discontented with all that is around you, and yet you shrink from alteration ; it is too much trouble ; you do not feel in yourself even energy enough for the ordinary demands of life."

"[From Norbourne Courtenaye]: You cannot doubt that influence: from our veriest infancy we feed upon the thoughts of the dead ; even your own strong and original mind has been cultivated by others. I never enter a library without being grateful to those whose moral existence has formed my own. Our sages, our poets, have left a world behind, formed of all that is good, beautiful, and true in our own. Not a life but owes to them some of its happiest hours ; they are our favourites, our old, familiar friends."

"[From Norbourne Courtenaye]: … all great discoveries have been the result of single endeavour."

"[From Walter Maynard]: What a folly are our own exertions ; every thing depends upon a lucky chance in this world !"

"The first step towards establishing pretensions of any kind, is to believe firmly in them yourself: faith is very catching, and half the beauty-reputations of which I hear have originated with the possessors."

"There was an evil in Pandora's box Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth In guise so lovely, that men crowded round And sought it as the dearest of all treasure. ... The evil's name was Love."

"We may, we ought, to be merciful to others ; to ourselves, we should be only just."

"Walter was wrong ; but I own I tremble at the fatality which sometimes seems to hang over our slightest actions. How often do we find ourselves involved in sudden misery and unhappiness, by circumstances over which we have no control ! and we ask bitterly ; "What have I done to deserve this ?" Not in this world will be the answer!"