Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"How duly do we appreciate the merit we ourselves discover and direct !"

"Rome, once the mistress, is now the caravanseray of the world."

"People and places are usually flattered in their portraits."

"We travel for many acquirements — health, information, amusement, notoriety, &c. &c. The advantages of each of these acquisitions have been eloquently set forth from the days of Ulysses, who travelled to seek his native land, to those of the members of the club who travel to seek anything else."

"… : the ridiculous is the reality of the sublime, …"

"The government of the mind is absolute, but nothing in its whole dominion does it modify as it does the face."

"It passed as weeks do when all is hurry, confusion, and packing — when there are a thousand things to do, and another thousand left undone. It is amazing how long such a week seems — events lengthen the time they number : it is the daily and quiet round of usual occupation that passes away so quickly ; it is the ordinary week which exclaims, "Good gracious ! it is Saturday again.”"

"[From Mr Morland]: Genius is the Hannibal of the mind. The Alps, which to the common observer seemed insurmountable, served only to immortalise his passage. The imagination is to work with its own resources ; the more it is thrown on them, the better."

"[From Mr Morland]: Artists are generally an enthusiastic, unworldly race ; jealous of praise, as the enthusiastic almost always are ; and exaggerating trifles, as the unworldly always do. But society is no school for the artist : the colours of his mind, like those of his pictures, lose their brilliancy by being exposed to the open air."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Alas ! we talk of their vanity ; we forget that, in doling forth the careless commendation, or as careless sneer, we are bestowing but the passing thought of a moment to that which has been the work of an existence. Truly genius, like virtue, ought to be its own reward ; but it cannot. Bitter though the toil, and vain the hope, human exertion must still look to human approbation."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: Enthusiasm is the royal road to success. Now, call it fame, vanity — what you will — how strange and how strong is the feeling which urges on the painter or the author ! We, who are neither, ought to marvel less at the works produced than at the efforts made."

"You do not love if there is not some nameless fascination in the lightest act. What would be absurd, ridiculous, nay disagreeable, in another, has in the beloved a fairy spell. Love's is the true alchemy, turning what it touches to gold."

"[Between Edward Lorraine and Mr Morland]: Memory is a much stranger faculty than hope. Hope I can understand ; I can divide its mixture of desire and fear ; I know when I wish for any thing — and hope is the expectation of wishing. But memory is unfathomable and indefinite. Why do we so often forget what we the most desire to remember ? and why, without any volition of our own, do we suddenly recall things, people, places, we know not why or wherefore ? Sometimes that very remembrance will haunt us like a ghost, and quite as causelessly, which at another time is a blank. Alas for love ! whose very existence depends on a faculty over which we have so little control."

"[From Mr Morland]: Of all false assertions that ever went into the world under the banner of a great name and the mail-armour of a well-turned phrase, Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank sheet of paper appears to me among the most untrue."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: What a pity that one forgets one's childish thoughts ; their originality would produce such an effect, properly managed ! It is curious to observe, that by far the most useful part of our knowledge is acquired unconsciously. We remember learning to read and write; but we do not remember how we learned to talk, to distinguish colours, &c The first thought that a child wilfully conceals is an epoch — one of life's most important — and yet who can recall it ?”"

"…. ; but young ladies are like the pieces of looking-glass let into chiffonniers and doorways — only meant to reflect the actions of others."

"… those who live amongst sights are those who go the least to see them. … That which is always within our reach is always the last thing we take ; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all."

"Sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty; secondly, either that of admiration or fault finding — the latter a very animated enjoyment."

"It is not of much use making up your mind very positively, for it is a thousand chances whether you ever do exactly what you intended."

"The imaginative gods of the Grecians are dethroned — the war like deities of the Scandinavians feared no longer; but we have set up a new set of idols in their place, and we call them Appearances."

"We do now too much undervalue the influence of the imagination, which so much exalts the outward shew by which it is caught. We forget there is no sense so difficult to awaken as common sense."

"Three armies might have been brought to combat with half the encouragement it took to bring the timid Matilda to the harp."

"— a Columbus of compliments, who held that your merits were new discoveries of his own, and you were to be surprised as well as pleased."

"An able general is never without a resource,"

"Very young people soon get acquainted ; but then they must be very young. Few general subjects have much feminine attraction ; women are not easily carried, not exactly out of themselves (for selfishness is no part of the characteristic I would describe), but out of their circle of either interests, vanities, or affections. A woman's individuality is too strong to take much part in those abstract ideas which enter largely into masculine discussion. Ask a woman for an opinion of a book — her criticism will refer quite as much to the author as to his work. But, while on the subject of this "silent hour," what an unanswerable answer it is to those who calumniate the sex as possessing the preponderance of loquacity ! Men do talk much more than women. What woman ever stood and talked seven hours at or about a schoolmaster, as has been done ? What woman ever goes to charities, to vestries, &c. for the mere sake, it seems to me, of speaking ?"

"— and half the speeches that have a run in society, only require malice to think them, and courage to utter them."

"Great part of his reputation rested on always choosing the subject his auditor was most likely to know nothing about. To young gentlemen he talked of love — to young ladies, of learning ; and we always think, what we do not comprehend must be something very fine : for example, he dilated to Emily on the music of Homer's versification, and the accuracy of Blackstone's deductions."

"It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself."

"Politeness, however, acts the lady's-maid to our thoughts ; and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public"

"Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings; we pity, but do not enter into the grief we have never known :"

"A ghost-story is an avalanche, increasing in horror as it goes ; and, like an avalanche, one often brings on another."

"Nothing exaggerates self-importance like solitude ; and perhaps because we have it not, then more than ever do we feel the want of sympathy : hopes, thoughts, these link themselves with external objects ; and it is the expression of that haunting desire of association, those vine-like emotions of the human heart which fasten on whatever is near, that give an interest like truth to the poet's fiction, who says that the mournful waters and the drooping trees murmur with his murmurs, and sorrow with his sorrows."

"Why, with all our deep and unutterable sympathies with love, are we inclined to laugh at half its disappointments ?"

"—for, on an average, there is not one pleasant letter out of ten, and it is miserable to pass the night ruminating on the other nine. One really wants the spirits of the morning to support the coming in of the post."

"This is so like a man's scheme, — always expecting others to be more disinterested than himself !"

"[From Mr Morland]: We have no patriotism towards posterity ; and the selfish amusement of the present always has and always will outweigh the important interests of the future,— or else a law would long ago have passed, for every century to consign the production of its predecessor to the flames. Readers would benefit by the originality this would produce ; and writers would no longer have to complain that their predecessors had taken all their best ideas :"

"[From Mr Morland]: Not so with Life : in at least seven cases out of nine, people are placed by fortune to fulfil a destiny for which they are eminently unfitted by nature."

"[From Mr Morland]: Look at the daily papers : to what eloquence do they attain when an affair of the heart becomes an affair of the police !"

"[From Lady Mandeville]: I hold that vanity is to love what opium is to the constitution, — exciting, but destroying."

"[From Mr Trevyllian]: ... truth is like the philosopher's stone, a thing not to be discovered, …"

"[From Mr Morland]: In this exaltation of constancy there is something of that self-deception which attends all our imaginings of every species of virtue. We make them so beautifully perfect, to serve as an excuse for not attaining thereunto. 'Perfection was not made for man.’"

"[From Mr Trevyllian]: There is something absurd in vowing constancy in love. Love depends on impulses and impressions : now, over neither of these have we any control. The only security is, that we soon exhaust our impulses, and grow callous to impressions ; and the attachment has then become a habit, whose chains are, of all others, the most difficult to break."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: We never understand the full heinousness of a crime unless we commit it."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: No sin in love is so great as inconstancy, because it unidealises it. The crime of sacrilege is not in the mere theft of the golden images from the high places — it is in afterwards applying them to base and common uses. Love and faith both require the ideal to make them holy."

"[From Mr Trevyllian]: Curiosity is its own suicide ; and what is love but curiosity ?"

"[From Lady Mandeville]: This is truly a man's logic, 'making the worse appear the better reason.'"

"[From Mr Morland]: It is very difficult to persuade people to be happy in any fashion but their own. We run after novelty in little things — we shrink from it in great. We make the yoke of circumstance a thousand times heavier, by so unwillingly accommodating ourselves to the inevitable."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual — by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent — place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it."

"[From Mr Trevyllian]: There are three things the wise man sedulously cultivates — his intellect, his affections, and his pleasures. Who will deny how much it brightens the intellect ? When does the mind put forth its powers ? when are the stores of memory unlocked ? when does wit 'flash from fluent lips ? ' — when but after a good dinner ? Half our friends are born of turbots and truffles."

"[From Mr Trevyllian]: {Example of sexual prejudice} That preference of white sauce to brown is a singular proof of female inferiority."