Quote

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.

Alexander Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Best
Courses
Look
Course
Assassination
Looks
Race
Inherited
Make
Wish
Superiority
Men
Comes
Gifted
Death
Personally
Nature
Noble
May
Kill

More quotes by Alexander Smith

Image
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
Image
In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.
Alexander Smith
Image
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
Image
My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable.
Alexander Smith
Image
I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.
Alexander Smith
Image
To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
Alexander Smith
Image
A man does not plant a tree for himself he plants it for posterity.
Alexander Smith
Image
We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.
Alexander Smith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.
Alexander Smith
Image
Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
Alexander Smith
Image
A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.
Alexander Smith
Image
An old novel has a history of its own.
Alexander Smith
Image
A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.
Alexander Smith
Image
The only thing a man knows is himself.
Alexander Smith
Image
The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.
Alexander Smith
Image
Pleasure has no logic it never treads in its own footsteps.
Alexander Smith
Image
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
Image
The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.
Alexander Smith