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In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Find
Unexpected
Nothing
Vain
Life
Lays
Departures
Seek
Arrivals
Tomorrow
Departure
Pleasure
Trap
Place
Traps
Today
Surprising

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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Every day travels toward death the last only arrives at it.
Alexander Smith
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If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.
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To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
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Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
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Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.
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If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
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It is the sternest philosophy, but on the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena of the world, failure and success are not accidents, as we so frequently suppose, but the strictest justice.
Alexander Smith
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The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.
Alexander Smith
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If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.
Alexander Smith
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The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore-- A shore that wears on her alluring brows Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, That blushed a tell-tale.
Alexander Smith
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If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
Alexander Smith
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The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.
Alexander Smith
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The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide.
Alexander Smith
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I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
Alexander Smith
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If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.
Alexander Smith
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It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.
Alexander Smith
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In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.
Alexander Smith
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Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
Alexander Smith
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My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest.
Alexander Smith
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To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,--just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.
Alexander Smith