Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"Night is beautiful in itself, but still more beautiful in its associations : it is not linked, as day is, with our cares and our toils, the business and the littleness of life. The sunshine brings with it its action : we rise in the morning, and our task is before us ; but night comes, and with it rest. If we leave sleep, and ask not of dreams forgetfulness, our waking is in solitude, and our employment is thought. Imagination has thrown her glory around the midnight — the orbs of heaven, the silence, the shadows, are steeped in poetry. Even in the heart of a crowded city, where the moonlight fell but upon pavement and roof, the heart would be softened, and the mind elevated, amid the loneliness of night's deepest and stillest hours ; — in the country the effect is still more impressive. We accustom ourselves to look upon the country as more pure, more free, more happy, than the town ; and it is from the wood and the field, the hill and the valley, that poetry takes that imagery which so imperceptibly mingles with all our excited moods."

"We hold not now the belief of old : we know that in their mystic characters nought of our destiny is written. Philosophy has taught a lowly lesson to our pride ; and no longer do we single out some bright and lovely planet, and ask of it our fate ; till, from asking, we almost hope that Night will send on her winds some answer, whose words are from the mystic scroll of our destiny. Foolishness of mortality ! to deem that the glorious and the lofty star, which looked not on us who watch its beauty, should have been placed in that mighty firmament to shed its radiance on our birth, and chronicle in its bright page our sin, our suffering, and our sorrow ! — and when have not these three words told the story of our life ? And yet this linking that vain life to the lofty and the lovely, — what is it but one of the many signs of the spirit within us — that which day crushes, but kills not — that spirit which looks into space with the eyes of longing, which spurns the course it treads, and says to earth, "Thou art my dwelling, but not my home ? ""

"… no lady's constancy is the worse for being tried."

"Strange that people should use so many more words than their intelligence needs !"

"Time destroys not half so ruthlessly as man."

"[… watching the hands move round the face of Beatrice's watch.]: God of heaven ! to think what every segment of that small space involves! — how much of human happiness and misery — of breath entering into our frail tenement of mortality, and making life — or departing from it, and making death — are in such brief portions of eternity! How much is there in one minute, when we reflect that that one minute extends over the world !"

"Who dare look into the secret recesses of their soul, and number their crimes of thought ?"

"— for nothing is so electric as the kindness of sympathy —"

"By-the-by, what an ugly phrase "making love" is — as if love were a dress or a pudding."

"… she could not but perceive the absurdity of the small vanities which wore a giant's armour till they fancied they had a giant's power."

"Essays are written on causes — they might be more pithily turned on consequences."

"Confidence is its own security."

"The truth is, the inhabitants of that languid and luxurious city wanted some little variety ; and the minister (your great men have each their weak point) supported a favourite actress in the range of first-rate characters in the Opera — supported her against the united musical opinion of Naples. One night she sang worse than ever ; and the next morning half the city rose up, demanding liberty and a new prima donna. A body of the lazzaroni also insisted on a lower price for lemonade, for the revolutionary movement was not serious enough for macaroni."

"Many were the disguises he assumed. At one time he even meditated cutting off his mustaches ; — that would have been "the unkindest cut of all.”"

"Advice generally does require some very powerful argument to be taken."

"The principal events in life are generally unexpected."

"We ask for miracles : is not our own blindness a perpetual miracle ? We live amid the blessings that Christianity has diffused through the smallest occurrences of our daily life ; — we feel hourly within us that pining for some higher state, whose promise is in the Gospel; — our weakness daily forces us to look around for support ; — we admit the perfection of the Saviour's moral code; — we see the mighty voice of prophecy, that spoke aloud of old upon the mountains, working year by year their wonderful fulfilment, — and yet we believe not, or, if we believe, we delay acting upon that belief."

"True it is, that we judge of others' actions by our own — but then we do not make the same allowances."

"A patriot might take his best lesson of disinterestedness from feminine affection."

"It is a common thing to jest at the rapid growth and exaggeration of girlish friendships. Strange, how soon we forget our youth ! True, they do not last. What very simple, serene, and sincere sentiment in this world ever did ? We have soon scarcely affection enough for even our nearest and dearest. Instead of laughing at such early attachment, we might rather grieve over the loss of the unsuspicious kindliness that gushed forth in feelings now gone from us for ever."

"It is the unhappy love — the betrayed, or the unrequited — that shrouds itself in silence. But in the girl, young and affectionate, out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh."

"Only those who have lived weeks and months in, as it were, a moral desert, among beings with whom they had not a feeling or a thought in common, with only a cold and comfortless knowledge of superiority to console them for being utterly unappreciated — who have felt words rise to the lip, and then checked them from a conviction that they would not be comprehended — they, and they alone, can enter into the pleasure of speaking and being understood, and making conversation a medium not only to express wants, but ideas."

"We have no right to expect more from others than we ourselves are inclined to give. If we were to love every one we meet, the very nature of love would be destroyed. Convenience, not affection, is the bond of society. The world is often taxed with falsehood, when, in reality, we should blame our own expectations. Courtesy from our acquaintance, kindness from our friends, attachment from those who make the small circle we love, is all we have a right to expect — and in nine cases out of ten it is what we really experience."

"How easy it is to be generous about the inconstancy which in our secret self we hold to be impossible !"

"Our first love-letter — it is an epoch in our life — a task equally delightful and difficult. No lover ever yet addressed his mistress, and no mistress ever yet addressed her lover, without beginning the gentle epistle some dozen times at least. There is so much to be said, and which no words seem exactly to say — the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach. One epithet is too cold — another we are scarcely entitled to use. Timidity and tenderness get in each other's way. The letter is sent, and immediately a thousand things are recollected — those, too, we were most anxious to write — and every sentence that occurs is precisely the one we wish we had omitted. The epistle is opened and read — with a little wonder, most probably not a little vexation, at its constrained style. True it is that no first love-letter ever yet gave satisfaction to either writer or reader. Its delight is another question."

"[A gastronome ought to fast sometimes on principle]; We appreciate no pleasures unless we are occasionally debarred from them. Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment."

"There are two motives to every action, and two versions of every story."

"But she forgot that when the very gentle do nerve themselves for action, it is under some strong and sudden impulse, and they then act usually in opposition to the whole of their previous bearing. Opposition is too new not to be carried into obstinacy. It has cost them so much to form a resolution, that they adhere to it with all the pertinacity felt for an uncommon and valuable acquisition."

"Experience teaches, it is true ; but she never teaches in time. Each event brings its lesson, and the lesson is remembered ; but the same event never occurs again."

"But Life's great circumstances turn on its small ones. Could we see into the causes of all important events, we should often find that some small and insignificant trifle has been, as it were, their fate."

"Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present."

"The great happiness-secret, after all, is division. How dare we, in this vain, fleeting world, concentrate our whole freight of interest in one frail bark ?"

"The proof that keen feelings are incompatible with happiness is shown in the fact, that the young commit suicide, the old never."

"How little do even our most intimate friends know of us ! There is an excitement about intense misery which is its support : light sufferings spring to the lips in words, and to the eyes in tears; but there is a pride in deep passion which guards its feelings from even the shadow of a surmise."

"The difference that there is between a woman's love and a man's ! His passion may lead him, in the first instance, to act in opposition to opinion — but its influence is only suspended ; and soon a sneer or a censure wounds his pride and weakens his love. A woman's heart, on the contrary, reposes more on itself ; and a fault found in the object of her attachment is resented as an injury : she is angered, not altered."

"[From Lady Mandeville]: In order to give an idea of beauty unspoiled by art, the heroine's hat falls off, and her hair falls down, while she looks lovely in dishevelled ringlets. Now, they quite forget two things : first, that though the hat may come off, it is by no means a necessary consequence that the hair should come down too ; and, secondly, if it did, the damsel would only look an untidy fright."

"[From Edward Lorraine]: I do not go quite the length of the modern philosopher, who asserts that our nature is not wholly sophisticated so long as we retain our juvenile predilection in favour of apple-dumpling; but I do think that the affection which clings to the home of our childhood — the early love which lingers round the flowers we have sown, the shrubs we have planted — is, though a simple, a sweet and purifying influence on the character. I cannot help thinking, that the drooping bough, the fairy-like rose, lend something of their own grace to one who has loved them and made them her companions."

"[From Madame de Ligne]: Who but an Englishman would have thought of telling a woman she would not be listened to ?"

"[From Edward Lorraine]: I thank you for reinforcing my favourite theory, which maintains that a love of talking is the great feature of the present time. Steam is not half so much its characteristic as speechifying.""

"[From Edward Lorraine]: The imagination makes the delight of the exertion which itself supports."

"[From Lord Mandeville]: Travelling is as much a passion as love, poetry, or ambition."

"She went to sleep, lulled by that best of mental opiates — a good resolution."

"It is curious to observe how soon we perceive the impropriety of departed pleasures. Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past."

"… [; and] the ridiculous is memory's most adhesive plaster."

"[But] youth, even of the most provident species, rarely desponds."

"Mischief in a large family, like murder in the newspapers, is sure to come out."

"[… ; and] ill nature is to conversation what oil is to the lamp — the only thing that keeps it alive."

"Attention is always pleasant in [an acquaintance] acquaintances till we tire of them."

"[To Emily the scene was new — and] novelty is the best half of pleasure."

"With a due proportion of the coldness of our insular atmosphere entering like a damp sea-breeze into our composition, we English are the worst people in the world to assume characters not our own —"