Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"[… :] I do believe that the power of making the future their present is one of the first gifts with which Providence endows a great man."

"Ah ! love and youth are delightful things, before the one is chilled, and the other darkened by those after-days, each of which brings with it some dull or sad lesson ! — when we learn, that, though disappointment is misery, fruition is but weariness ; and that happiness is like the statue of Isis, whose veil no mortal ever raised."

"Truly, a little love-making is a very pleasant thing, …"

"We hope, plan, execute; will it be vain? Or will the future be the past again?"

"The anxious struggle — the loneliness of neglect — the consciousness of merit — the resources which open to a mind flung back upon itself — will do more to stimulate exertion than praise or even profit. The flattered and followed author sees too soon the worthlessness and hollowness of the prize for which he contends."

"[… ; that he has despised the flatterer, but loved the flattery — at once ungrateful and exacting; that he has praised himself —] the worst of praise is that given in hopes of return; …"

"There is nothing people are so much ashamed of as truth. It is a common observation, that those whose writings are most melancholy are often most lively in conversation. [They are ashamed of their real nature ; and] it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are."

"She had seen many who had long been the throned idols of her imagination, and her disappointment much resembled that of the princely lover of Cinderella, who, on questioning his porters if they had seen a robed and radiant beauty pass, learnt that their uncharmed eyes had only beheld a little dirty girl. She had fallen into the common error of supposing that the author must personify his works, and that his conversation must be copy and compeer of his writings."

"[Divers introductions took place; and] Emily heard a great deal of conversation, of which conceit was the canvass, while flattery laid on the colours."

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “[— and of course,] a married woman has no time for music or reading.”"

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “[I nevertheless think that] the blessings of matrimony, like those of poverty, belong rather to philosophy than reality.”"

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “[Perhaps from the pleasures of memory ; for] She is now half of one of those happy couples which make one understand a phrase somewhat difficult to comprehend, from so seldom witnessing it — domestic felicity.”"

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “[I like to meet him sometimes:] it is good for one's moral constitution to know there are such things as kindliness and integrity to be found in the world.”"

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “Travelling is as much a passion as ambition or love.”"

"[From a Scotchman, author of a history of Mary Queen of Scots]: “That a prejudice still exists between the Scotch and the English is no credit to either. Were I to allot each their shares of illiberality, I should say, there are six of the one and half-a-dozen of the other ; and as I am one who utterly despairs of improving the human race, I have no doubt it will continue.”"

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough ; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice — the severity of 'the ungentle craft ' originates in its own want of success ; they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over, …”"

"Miss Amesbury is especially happy in the use of quotations —an apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence."

"[From Miss Amesbury (who is possibly L. E. L. herself)]: “When I say your gratitude ought to be excited by my vanity, I divide the functions of vanity into two influences ; the one is, when it is passive, I only feed upon the memories it brings ; the other is, when it is active, and prompts me to exert myself for your entertainment ; and it is while thus acting for your amusement that it calls on you to be grateful, if not gratified.”"

"[From a young traveller, summoned by Mrs Sullivan]: “… and if he did get out six words, seven were unintelligible.”"

"All around laughed, as people always laugh at misfortunes, i.e. with all their heart."

"[… ; it seemed, however,] like English sunshine, too precious to be long enjoyed."

"[For some time] she listened to every word she could catch, till at length the disagreeable conviction was forced upon her, that clever people talked very much as others did."

"[From Mrs Sullivan]: “Knowledge is much like dust — it sticks to one, one does not know how.”"

"Suicide and antipathy to fires in a bed-room seem to be among the national characteristics. Perhaps the same moral cause may originate both."

"[… and] it was one of those wet, miserable evenings, gratis copies distributed by November through the year."

"[… and] in came [Master Adolphus and Master Alfred in full cry, having disputed by the way which was to go first — also] a baby, eloquent as infancy usual is, and, like most youthful orators, more easily heard than understood."

"[; but] shun the establishment of a bachelor who has hung a pendulum between temptation and prudence till the age of forty-five —"

"Alas ! for the victim of friendship, whom sentiment or silliness seduces into passing a long day ! The upright sitting on the repulsive sofa — the mental exhaustion in searching after topics of conversation, which, like the breeze in Byron's description of a calm, "come not" — the gossip that, out of sheer desperation, darkens into scandal; if ever friends or feelings are sacrificed under temptation too strong to be resisted, it is in the conversational pauses of a long day ; and worst of all, a long day between people who have scarcely an idea or an acquaintance in common, for the one to be exchanged, or the other abused — communication or condemnation equally out of the question."

"It is amazing how oppressive is the cleverness of some people, as if it were quite a duty in you to be clever too —"

"What a charm there must be in praise, when it consoles for all the miseries and mortifications of literature !"

"Grief, after all, is like smoking in a damp country — what was at first a necessity becomes afterwards an indulgence."

"If there be one part of life on which the curse spoken at Eden rests in double darkness — if there be one part of life on which is heaped the gathered wretchedness of years, it is the time when guilty love has burnt itself out, and the heart sees crowd around those vain regrets, that deep remorse, whose voices are never heard but in the silence of indifference."

"[— and] expectations have that sort of ideal beauty no reality can equal : In the moral as in the physical world, the violent is never the lasting — the tree forced into unnatural luxuriance of blossom bears them and dies."

"… : The Janus of Love's year may have two faces, but they look only on each other."

"Truly does passion live but in the present."

"A veiled lady either is, or ought to be, enough to turn the head of any cavalier under five-and-twenty."

"To me statues never bear aught of human resemblance — I cannot think of them as the likeness of man or woman — colourless, shadowy, they seem the creation of a spell ; their spiritual beauty is of another world — and well did the Grecian of old, whose faith was one of power and necessity, not of affection, make his statues deities : the cold, the severely beautiful, we can offer them worship, but never love."

"The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may, with equal truth, be applied to the imagination — it is a good servant, but a bad master."

"[There] he dreamed of life — those dreams which so unfit the visionary for action, which make the real world so distasteful when measured by that within."

"Lord and Lady Etheringhame were blind to the faults, even as they were to the good qualities of their children, simply because to neither had they an answering key in themselves ; we cannot calculate on the motions of a world, of whose very existence we dream not."

"It was curious that, while father and mother were cut out in the most common-place shapes of social automata, both sons possessed a romance of feeling which would greatly have alarmed their rational parents. But no moral perceptions are so blunt as those of the selfish ; theirs is the worst of near-sightedness — that of the heart."

"In marriage, as in chemistry, opposites have often an attraction."

"They reached the house ; and what with Morton's return, Lorraine's wit, and Adelaide's gratified vanity, the supper passed with a degree of gaiety very rare in a house whose atmosphere might have vied with Leila's snow court in Thalaba for coldness and quiet."

"[After a due portion of time employed in exclamations, sympathies, and inquiries, how they came to meet was] explained as satisfactorily as the end of an old novel, when every thing is cleared up, and every body killed, after having first repented, or married."

"It may sound like the after-dinner patriotism of the Freemasons' Tavern ; but surely the heart does beat somewhat high beneath the shadow of an old oak."

"[From the landlord of the Spread Eagle]: "[… ; and] if I had ten [pounds] in the Bank of England, there would be a national bankruptcy, on purpose that I might lose it ; and if I were to turn undertaker, nobody would die, that I mightn't have the burying of them : it's just my luck always.""

"[From Lady Mandeville]: "A woman never thoroughly knows her dependence till she is married.""

"[From Lady Mandeville]: "What course of Eton and Oxford equals the mental fatigues of an accomplished young lady ?""

"[From Mr Delawarr]: "[Ah !] You resemble those political economists who, if they see a paragraph in the paper one day rejoicing over the country's prosperity, examine its columns to see what new tax is to be suggested.""

"[From Lady Mandeville]: "Our said happiness is but the excuse of our exclusion. Whenever I hear a man talking of the advantages of our ill-used sex, I look upon it as the prelude to some new act of authority.""