Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"Nothing more indicates those tastes and habits which go so far towards both making and showing the character — as a person's sitting-room."

"When we trace to their source the most important circumstances of our life, in what trifles have they originated! — a look, a word, are the ministers of fate."

"It is a notable fact that we keep ourselves most in the dark about ourselves."

"Once set a strong mind thinking, and you have done all that it needs for its education."

"If ever we forgive another's celebrity, it is when it fulfils our own prophecy."

"How many beautiful creations, how many glorious dreams went with him to the tomb ! but the unfulfilled destiny of genius is a mystery whose solution is not of earth. It is but one of those many voices wandering in this wilderness of ours that tell us, not here is our lot appointed to finish. We are here but for a space and a season ; for a task and a trial, and of the end no man knoweth. The earthly immortality of the mind is but a type of the heavenly immortality of the soul."

"Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others."

"Modern history might be told by a succession of dinners."

"There is an awe about death, even in the face the most familiar to us; it has already taken its likeness from the hereafter, so dreadful and so dark."

"[Chapter title]:{of death} The Usual Destiny of the Imagination"

"It is a mood whose "profitless dejection” there are few among us but what have known. It is the result of the overstrained nerves, the worn-out frame—something of bodily weakness must mingle with it. We turn away from the future, we are too desponding to look forward. Every sorrow of the past seems to rise up, not only as a recollection of suffering, but as if each were an omen of what is to come. We feel as if even to wish were a folly ; or, worse, a tempting of fate. We have no confidence in our own good fortune; it seems as if the mere fact of wishing were enough to have that wish denied. A fretful discontent gnaws at the heart, the worse for being ashamed to confess it."

"Charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfilment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent."

"There is something fearfully wrong in what we call our highly civilized state of society, when poverty can be permitted to take the ghastly shapes of suffering that it does. It is enough, if we did but think, to make the heart sick, when we know the misery, the abject misery, which surrounds us in this vast city ; and we might tremble to consider how much might be prevented—prevented both by individual and by general exertion."

"It is a most difficult art to give; for if, in giving, we also give the habit of dependence, our gift has been that of an evil spirit, which always proves fatal. What we should seek to give are, habits, not only of industry, but of prudence: to look forward, is the first great lesson of human improvement. In the assistance hitherto offered to those in need, the self-respect of the obliged has been too much forgotten : we have degraded, where we should have encouraged. The remedy lies with time, and with knowledge ; but there must be much to redress in the social system, which has luxury at one extreme, and starvation at the other."

"nd this is the dearest privilege of the poet—to soothe the sorrowing, and to excite the languid hour ; to renovate exhausted nature, by awakening it with the spiritual and the elevated ; and bringing around our common hours shadows from those more divine."

"Ah ! sad it is to see the deck Dismasted of some noble wreck ; And sad to see the marble stone Defaced, and with gray moss o'ergrown; And sad to see the broken lute For ever to its music mute. But what is lute, or fallen tower, Or ship sunk in its proudest hour, To awe and majesty combined In their worst shape — the ruined mind ?"

"God, in thy mercy, keep us with thy hand ! Dark are the thoughts that strive within the heart, When evil passions rise like sudden storms, Fearful and fierce ! Let us not act those thoughts ; Leave not our course to our unguided will. Left to ourselves, all crime is possible, And those who seemed the most removed from guilt, Have sunk the deepest !"

"It is an awful thing how we forget The sacred ties that bind us each to each. Our pleasures might admonish us, and say, Tremble at that delight which is unshared; Its selfishness must be its punishment. All have their sorrows, and how strange it seems They do not soften more the general heart : Sorrows should be those universal links That draw all life together."

"The moonlight falleth lovely over earth ; And strange, indeed, must be the mind of man That can resist its beautiful reproach. How can hate work like fever in the soul With such entire tranquillity around? Evil must be our nature to refuse Such gentle intercession."

"'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words ! Life is in them, and death. A word can send The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek, Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn The current cold and deadly to the heart. Anger and fear are in them ; grief and joy Are on their sound ; yet slight, impalpable:— A word is but a breath of passing air."

"I can understand the feeling of the duellist when really fierce and bitter—there are injuries only to be washed out in blood ; but I have always thought, that the seconds must, or ought, to feel very uncomfortable. They stand by in cold blood to watch the glittering steel, whose shimmer may every moment be quenched in blood. If the eye be dropped for an instant, the next it may look on death, and death in its most fearful shape—one human being dying by the rage, the evil passion, or the unforgivable fault of another."

"I believe there is not a woman in the world that would hesitate to part with the most costly toy in her possession, to save but an annoyance from the object she loved …"

"[From Ethel Churchill]: Good heavens ! what a precious thing love is ! what a gift of all hope, all happiness, into the power of another !—and yet, how often is it bestowed in vain ! wasted, utterly and cruelly wasted !"

"The first love-letter is an epoch in love's happy season — it makes assurance doubly sure — that which has hitherto, perhaps, only found utterance in sweet and hurried words, now seems to take a more tangible existence. A love-letter is a proof of how dearly, even in absence, you are remembered."

"There are times when the poet marvels how he ever wrote, and feels as if he never could write again."

"Few know the demands made by the imagination on those who are once its masters and its victims. Its exercise is so feverish, and so exciting ; the cheek burns, the pulse beats aloud, the whole frame trembles with eagerness during the progress of composition. For the time you are what you create. The exhaustion of this process is not felt till some other species of exertion makes its demand on the already overwrought frame, the overstrained nerves begin to discover that they have been wound to the utmost. There is no strength left to bear life's other emotions."

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: The lover and the physician are each popular from the same cause—we talk to them of nothing but ourselves; I dare say that was the origin of confession—egotism, under the fine name of religion."

"But there always is in my mind something at once ludicrous and mournful in a crowd congregated for the purpose of amusement. What discontent, what vanity, move the complicated wheels of the social machine! There are many pleasures that one can comprehend, and even go the length of admitting, that they are worth some trouble in endeavouring to obtain; but the mania of filling your house with guests of whom you know little, and for whom you care nothing, is only less incomprehensible than why they should be at the trouble of coming to you."

"Who ever said one-half of all that seemed in absence so easy to say ?"

"It is a weary and a bitter hour When first the real disturbs the poet's world, And he distrusts the future. Not for that Should cold despondency weigh down the soul It is a glorious gift, bright poetry, And should be thankfully and nobly used. Let it look up to heaven !"

"[From Lavinia Fenton]: I lay it down as a rule, the truth of which all experience confirms, that every man behaves as ill as he possibly can to every woman, under every possible circumstance ! … What man has the slightest scruple as to gaining the confidence ; making himself not only necessary to her happiness, but that very happiness itself; and then sacrificing her to vanity, caprice, or any slight motive, that would not be held valid for one moment in any other matter !"

"[From Lady Marchmont’s journal]: Will the time ever come, when men will feel that the mind and the heart must work in concert, and that we must look around and afar for our happiness ; that our great mistake has been, the narrow circle to which we are content to limit good ?"

"We might have been !—these are but common words, And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;"

"… if there be one torture which the demons, who delight in human misery, might, rejoice to inflict, it is the anxious suspense of love acting upon an imaginative temperament. It is extraordinary the power of creation with which the mind seems suddenly endowed, and only to suppose the worst. Death, sickness, crime, misfortune,—these are the images which start upon the solitude made fearful with their presence."

"Life is made up of vanities — so small, So mean, the common history of the day, — That mockery seems the sole philosophy. Then some stern truth starts up — cold, sudden, strange; And we are taught what life is by despair : — The toys, the trifles, and the petty cares, Melt into nothingness — we know their worth ; The heart avenges every careless thought, And makes us feel that fate is terrible."

"To find that you have been deceived, where you trusted so entirely ; trifled with, where all your deepest and sweetest emotions had been called into life, is the most acute—the most enduring sorrow of which that life is capable."

"It is a fearful trust, the trust of love. In fear, not hope, should woman's heart receive A guest so terrible."

"Every age has its characteristic, and our present one is not behind its predecessors in that respect; it is the age of systems, every system enforced by a treatise."

"Where is the heart that has not bowed A slave, eternal Love, to thee? Look on the cold, the gay, the proud, And is there one among them free !"

"Conjugal government requires its treatises. A young woman setting out in life lacks a printed guide. Her cookery-book, however, may afford some useful hints till one be actually directed to the important subject just mentioned. Many well-known receipts are equally available for a batterie de cuisine or du cœur. Your roasted husband is subdued by the fire of fierce words and fiercer looks — your broiled husband, under the pepper and salt of taunt and innuendo — your stewed husband, under the constant application of petty vexations — your boiled husband dissolves under the watery influences — while your confectionized husband goes through a course of the blanc mange of flattery, or the preserves and sweets of caresses and smiles."

"... everybody was much more pleased than people are in general with any lions, who are also exotics, to whom they condescend to be attentive, but refuse to be friendly; rejoicing when any little conventional informality reduces the genius, whose patent of nobility the Creator himself has bestowed, below the level of fashion, and substituting ridicule for admiration, the smile of the scorner for the approval of veneration."

"The possession of beauty leads to an overweening admiration of it, and wealth gives a power of preserving this boon of nature in a manner forbidden to the poor, which will account fully for the extreme and perhaps blameable solicitude a few continue to feel on the subject."

"... old bachelors are fond of young girls, under the idea that they can manage them the best"

"What a life for a free man, born to the use of dogs and horses, pure air, and wide-spreading moors! — no wonder that, although junior partner, and as modest as he was high-spirited, he trod his counting-house floor with a step vigorous and springy as the young captain of a man-of-war, for he felt that he was an emancipated slave; nay, more, a British merchant. If not "monarch of all he surveyed," he was certainly monarch of all he desired, which is probably more than any one of those mighty personages who rule mankind could have honestly asserted."

"... a disgust for political and fashionable society (which is, in fact, very generally to be found in those who are engaged in public offices, conscious that they do the work for which others are paid)"

"No person of fashion ever laughs out from the impulse of the heart,"

"The power of young Joy, like that of young Love, does not travel far on the dusty road of life in general."

"And no ring, if it does wither its circle, withers so utterly as a golden one. With only the false criterion of courtship to judge by, the wedded pair expect too much from each other ; and those who should make the most, make the least allowance. Tastes differ, tempers jar, trifles become important — as the grain of sand, which, nothing in itself, yet, gathered together, sweeps over the fertile plain, leaving no sign that there ever was blossom or fruit. The scar, which would soon pass, did distance or time intervene, can not heal from hourly irritation, One quarrel brings the memory of its predecessor, and grievances and mortifications are treasured up for perpetual reference. Too late, each finds out how utterly unsuited either is to the other ; they have not a feeling, a taste, or an opinion in common."

"Alas! how seldom are any of us quite happy at the passing moment."

"But Mr. Gooch liked bright colours; and, without going the length of kindling yellow, most gentlemen like them too. I think it is the mere preference of personal vanity, on the principle of contrast, their taste is dictated by self-consideration; a woman in sombre hues does not sufficiently throw out their own dark dress."