Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"[; and] though Fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there."

"General assertions, like general truths, are not always applicable to individual cases [; and]"

"Nothing circulates so rapidly as a secret."

"Surprise is the only power that works miracles now-a-days ; …"

"If there be two things in the world — to use a common domestic expression — enough to provoke a saint, it is, first to have your husband not enter into your feelings — (your feelings sound so much better than your temper) — and, in the second place, laughing at them."

"Every girl has a natural fancy for enacting the heroine — and, generally speaking, a very harmless fancy it is, after all."

"Absence is a trial whose result is often fatal to love ; but there are two sorts of absence. I would not advise a lover to stake his fortune or his feelings on the faith of the mistress whose absence is one of flattery, amusement, and that variety of objects so destructive to the predominance of one — at least not to trust an incipient attachment to such an ordeal ; but he may safely trust absence which is passed in loneliness, where the heart, thrown upon itself, finds its resource in that most imaginative faculty — memory."

"Thoughts rarely wander without an object ; and that object once found, they fix there with all the intensity which any thing of sentiment acquires in solitude or idleness."

"— obstinacy is the heroism of little minds —"

"Your weak animals are almost always cunning ;"

"It is a wretched thing to pass one's life among those utterly incapable of appreciating us ; upon whom our sense or our sentiment, our wit or our affection, are equally thrown away : people who make some unreal and distorted picture of us — say it is our likeness, and act accordingly."

"Well, an obstinate temper is very disagreeable, particularly in a wife ; a passionate one very shocking in a child ; but, for one's own particular comfort, Heaven help the possessor of an irresolute one ! Its day of hesitation — its night of repentance — the mischief it does — the miseries it feels ! — its proprietor may well exclaim, "Nobody can tell what I suffer but myself!”"

"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."

"Change of opinion is like waltzing — very much the fashion, and very proper ; but the English have so many ridiculous prejudices, that they really do both as if they were doing something very wrong."

"And also, like most indolent people, he easily yielded to any impression : his character may be summed up by saying, he would have made an exquisite woman."

"No illusions are so perfect as those of love — none, therefore, so pleasant."

"Or — to descend to the ordinary ranks and routine of life — we furnish a house, that our friends may cry out on our extravagance or bad taste; — we give dinners, that our guests may hereafter find fault with our cook or our cellar ; — we give parties, that three parts of the company may rail at their stupidity; — we dress, that our acquaintance may revenge themselves on our silks, by finding fault with our appearance ;— we marry ; if well, it was interest — if badly, it was insanity ; — we die, and even that is our own fault ; if we had but done so and so, or gone to Dr. such a one, the accident would not have happened."

"The politician — oh, Job ! the devil should have made you prime minister — set the Tories to impeach your religion, the Whigs your patriotism — placed a couple of Sunday newspapers before you — he certainly would have succeeded in making you curse and swear too ; and then posterity — it will just be a mooted point for future historians, whether you were the saviour, the betrayer, or the tyrant of your country, those being the three choice epitaphs kept for the especial use of patriots in power."

"Oh, Life ! — the wearisome, the vexatious — whose pleasures are either placed beyond our reach, or within it when we no longer desire them — when youth toils for the riches, age may possess but not enjoy ; — where we trust to friendship, one light word may destroy ; or to love, that dies even of itself; — where we talk of glory, philosophical, literary, military, political — die, or, what is much more, live for it — and this coveted possession dwells in the consent of men of whom no two agree about it."

"Vanity is love's visier, and often more powerful than his master."

"Love is at once the best temptation for a hermit, and the best cure for a misanthrope."

"A kindly intention is often the best eloquence ; …"

"— Lady Lauriston was a woman with whom it would be as wearisome to talk as it would be to perambulate long a straight gravel walk and neatly arranged flowers ; …"

"The surprise was something of a shock ; but people may be frightened into their wits as well as out of them ; and the necessity for exertion usually brings with it the power —"

"A gallop always puts people in a good humour ; …"

"Deep as may be the regret, though the lost be the dearest, nay, the only tie that binds to earth, never did the most passionate grief give way to its emotion in the presence of the dead. Awe is stronger than sorrow : there is a calm, which, though we do not share, we dare not disturb : the chill of the grave is around them and us."

"There is wisdom in even the exaggeration of grief — there is little cause to fear we should feel too much."

"Amid the many signs of that immortality of which our nature is so conscious, none has the certainty, the conviction, of affection : we feel that love, which is stronger and better than life, was made to outlast it. In the memory that survives the lost and the dear, we have mute evidence of a power over the grave :"

"The narrative of the young carries its hearer along by its own buoyancy — by the gladness which is contagious ; …"

"Hope is the prophet of youth — young eyes will always look forwards."

"Enough of murder, and mystery, which always seems to double the crime it hides, …"

"The self-reproach of a sensitive and affectionate temper is of the most refined and exaggerating nature. Unmixed grief requires and seeks solitude — its unbroken indulgence is its enjoyment ; but that which is mingled with remorse, involuntarily shrinks from it self, — it wants consolation — it desires to hear some other voice extenuate its faults, — and even while disowning and denying the offered excuse, it is comforted."

"Nothing is so ingenious in its thousand ways and means as affection."

"How youth makes its wishes hopes, and its hopes certainties !"

"Affection exaggerates its own offences."

"It is curious how inseparable eating and kindness are with some people."

"Of all passions, love is the most engrossing and the most superstitious. How often has a leaf, a star, a breath of wind, been held as an omen ! It draws all things into somewhat of relation to itself: it is despotic, and jealous of all authority but its own : it bars the heart against the entrance of other feelings, and deems wandering thoughts its traitors."

"… the science of human happiness — and all is science now-a-days — is greatly in arrear, or we should fix the middle of the day for farewells."

"Physical miseries greatly add to the discomfort of mental ones."

"No time passes so rapidly as that of painful expectancy, —No hour arrives so soon as the one we dread."

"The human heart is like Pandora's box — only it is hatred, not hope, that lies curled up at the bottom. It is well we are little in the habit of analysing our common and passing sensations, — we should be horror-struck at our own quantity of hate."

"With the concentrated anger of fourteen patriots at a list of sinecures in which they have no part, or a dozen professors who find they cannot get pupils — nor fees without, Lord Merton steadied his voice, almost inarticulate from rage, …"

"I have heard it said, that no man ever believes a woman can fall in love with his friend : I would add, she certainly falls marvellously in his opinion if she does —"

"How untrue, to say youth is the happiest season of our life ! it is filled with vexations, for almost all its ideas are false ones ; they must be set right, and often how harshly ! Its hopes are actual beliefs: how often must they be taught doubt by disappointment ! And then its keen feelings, laying themselves so bare to the beak of the vulture experience ! Youth is a season that has no repose."

"[From Edward Lorriane]: We speak ill of our neighbours, not from ill-nature, but idleness ; satire is only the cayenne of conversation : people have so few subjects for talking about in common with their friends but their friends ; and it is utterly impossible to dress them as Fontenelle did his asparagus, toute en huile."

"[From Mr Delawarr]: As it is the great principle of political economy to tax luxuries, why are not reports taxed ? Are they not the chief luxuries of society ? Of all my senses, I thank Heaven that of hearing is limited ; the dative case is very well — hearing what is said to me ; but preserve me from the ablative case — hearing what is said about me !"

"[From Edward Lorraine]: If this city system of colonisation goes on, our children will advertise a green tree, like an elephant, as 'this most wonderful production of nature ;' and the meaning of green grass will only be to be found in the dictionary."

"[From Emily]: It is curious, that when we feel in ourselves the most inclined to silence, we almost always fancy it is absolutely necessary we should talk."

"[From Mr Delawarr]: The desire of notoriety, and the love of fame, differ but little ; yet one is the meanest, the other the noblest feeling in our nature : the one looks to the present, and is a mixture of the selfish and the common-place — the other dwells upon the future, and is the generous and the exalted.”"

"[From Edward Lorraine]: ... pretension is a sort of general election, depending on universal suffrage, and subject to canvassing and criticism."