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Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
World
Finer
Books
Within
Book

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The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.
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Good-humor and, generosity carry day with the popular heart all the world over.
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Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
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A single soul is richer than all the worlds.
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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.
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It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.
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One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.
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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.
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There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
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A man does not plant a tree for himself he plants it for posterity.
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Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.
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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.
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An old novel has a history of its own.
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The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
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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.
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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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We are never happy we can only remember that we were so once.
Alexander Smith
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How beautiful the yesterday that stood Over me like a rainbow! I am alone, The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.
Alexander Smith
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To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
Alexander Smith
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To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
Alexander Smith