Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"The life of the most successful writer has rarely been other than of toil and privation; and here I cannot but notice a singularly absurd "popular fancy," that genius and industry are incompatible. The one is inherent in the other. A mind so constituted has a restlessness in its powers, which forces them into activity."

"In the country, an open window lets in at once the fair face of heaven : the sunshine has its own cheerfulness ; the green bough flings on the floor its pleasant shade; and the spirit sees, at a glance, the field and the hedge where the hawthorn is in bloom. Not so in a town : there smoke enters at the casement ; and we look out upon the darkened wall, and the narrow street, where the very atmosphere is dull and coarse. Its gloomy influence is on all."

"Friends began to drop in. One came with intelligence of a sale, where the most divine things in the world were to be had for nothing, or next to it—that next to it, by-the-by, is usually a very sufficient difference."

"A history of how and where works of imagination have been produced, would be more extraordinary than even the works themselves."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague]: I see no great good in being remembered : I would fain concentrate existence in the present. I would forget in order to enjoy. As to memory, it only reminds me that I am growing older every day ; and as to hope, it only puts one out of conceit with possession."

"The future has a more subtle sympathy with the present than our imperfect nature can analyse. Who has not felt that nameless shadow upon the spirit, which indicates the coming trouble as surely as the over-hanging cloud foretells the thunderstorm ? The external world is full of signs ; and so is the internal, if we knew but how to trace them. There is the weight on the air before the tempest; there is the weight on the heart as the coming evil approaches."

"The wind, amid the green leaves and the breathing flowers, goes its way in music ; it is the sweet and mystic song of universal nature. But it enters into our dwellings, and it learns there the accent of pain ; it breathes what it bears away—the sigh that tells, even in the midnight hours, of unrest, and the voice of lamentation that speaks but in solitude. These echoes accumulate, and the house that has stood for years retains within its walls complaints long since lost in air: but the wind, that heard, recalls them ; and there is a strange likeness to humanity in its murmurs, as it howls mournfully along the vaulted ceiling, or shrieks through the winding passages."

"Alas ! why should our lot in life be made, Before we know that life ? Experience comes, But comes too late. If I could now recall All that I now regret, how different Would be my choice !"

"Life has dark secrets ; and the hearts are few That treasure not some sorrow from the world— A sorrow silent, gloomy, and unknown, Yet colouring the future from the past. … for time is terrible, Avenging, and betraying."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: If a young man has his way to make in the world, a wife is a dead weight upon his hands. Indeed, I have looked upon the fable of Sisyphus as an allegory, and that his wife was the stone which so perpetually rolled back upon his hands, effectually retarding his weary progress up-hill."

"[From Lord Norbourne]: The next thing that a young man loses, after his heart, is his hearing."

"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."

"I believe all the good that is sometimes said of human nature when I remember the feelings of youth; and it is this principle explains why men whose "hearts are dry as summer's dust," often delight in the society of the very young. The sympathy is awakened by memory."

"Even into philosophy is carried the deeper truth of the heart—and how many inconsistencies are at once understood ! We grow more indulgent, more pitying ; and one sweet weakness of our own leads to so much indulgence for others. We doubt, however, whether the term weakness be not misapplied in this case. If there be one emotion that redeems our humanity by stirring all that is generous and unselfish within us, that awakens all the poetry of our nature, and that makes us believe in that heaven of which it bears the likeness, it is love : love, spiritual, devoted, and eternal ; love, that softens the shadow of the valley of death, to welcome us after to its own and immortal home."

"Nothing can compensate to a woman for the want of exterior attraction. There is a nameless fascination about beauty, which seems, like all fairy gifts, crowded into one. It wins without an effort, and obtains credit for possessing every thing else. How many mortifications, from its very cradle, has the unpleasing exterior to endure !"

"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 an harbour, here a rock — The one we will attain, the other shun :" And we do neither."

"Love is a new intelligence entered into the being ; it is the softest, but the most subtle light ; in all experience it deceives itself; but how many truths does it teach,—how much knowledge does it impart ! It makes us alive to a thousand feelings, of whose very existence, till then, we had not dreamed. The poet's page has a new magic : we comprehend all that had before seemed graceful exaggeration ; we now find that poetry falls short of what it seeks to express ; and we take a new delight in the musical language that seems made for tenderness."

"Yet wherefore pause upon our way ? Tis best to hurry on ; For half the dangers that we fear, We face them, and they're gone."

"There is nothing to which you so soon become accustomed as to the presence of the beloved one ; the gentle chain of habit easily becomes a sweet necessity."

"I do not ask to offer thee A timid love like mine ; I lay it, as the rose is laid, On some immortal shrine."

"There has always been to me something inexpressibly touching in the single taper burning through the long and lonely hours of silence and sleep. It must mark some weary vigil ; one, perhaps, by the sick couch, where rests the pale face on which we dread every moment to look our last. How the very heart suspends its beating in the hushed stillness of the sick chamber ! what a history of hopes fears, and cares, are in its hours! How does love then feel its utter fondness and its helplessness! How is the more active business of the outward world forgotten in the deep interest of the hushed world in those darkened walls !—a look, a tone, a breath, is there of vital importance. With what tender care the cup is raised to the feverish lip ; with what intense anxiety the colour is watched on the wasted cheek ! How are the pulses counted on the thin hand, and sometimes in vain !"

"[From Lord Norbourne]: As little do I think that your country pursuits deserve to engross your time. Life was given for something better than sitting after fish, walking after birds, and riding after hares.”"

"[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."

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

"[From Lord Norbourne]: Talents of this high and imaginative order, seem to me rather given to benefit others than their possessor. Their harvest is in the future, not the present. Their brains produce the golden ore, which commoner hands mould to the daily purposes of life.""

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

"[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."

"… there are no weaknesses which we so thoroughly despise as those to which ourselves have yielded; and no faults strike us so forcibly as our own, when they are past."

"But dreams, which fill the waking eye With deeper spells than sleep, When hours unnumbered pass us by ; From such we wake and weep. We wake, but not to sleep again, The heart has lost its youth ; The morning light that wakes us then, Cold, calm, and stern, is truth."

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

"... 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."

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

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

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

"[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."

"[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."

"Moreover, the habits of business are the most enduring of any; …"

"[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."

"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 ?"

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

"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."

"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!"

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

"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]: … all great discoveries have been the result of single endeavour."

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

"[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."

"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."

"The affection of family ties has the character on it of childhood in which it was formed ; it is free, open, confiding; it has none of the delicacy of friendship, or the romance of sentiment : you know that success ought to be in common, and that you have but one interest."

"Sooner or later a woman must inevitably despise the man who takes money from her. Before a man can do this, there must be those radical defects of character to which even kindness cannot always be blind. He must be a moral coward, because he exposes her to those annoyances which he has not courage enough to face himself; he must be mean, because he submits to an obligation from the inferior and the weak; and he must be ungrateful, because ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favours of which we are ashamed. Money is the great breaker-up of love and friendship ;"