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If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Wraps
Secrecy
Preserve
Preserves
Secret
Wish
Frankness
Statesmanship
Wrap

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.
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Trees are your best antiques
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Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!
Alexander Smith
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Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
Alexander Smith
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In my garden I spend my days in my library I spend my nights.
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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In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present with the book I am in the past.
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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We are never happy we can only remember that we were so once.
Alexander Smith
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Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.
Alexander Smith
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Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
Alexander Smith
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A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
Alexander Smith
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Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
Alexander Smith
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There is a certain even-handed justice in Time and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul.
Alexander Smith
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In winter, when the dismal rain Comes down in slanting lines, And Wind, that grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines.
Alexander Smith
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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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Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
Alexander Smith
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Each time we love,We turn a nearer and a broader markTo that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.
Alexander Smith
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Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.
Alexander Smith
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If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.
Alexander Smith