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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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Books
Divided
Interest
Interests
Library
Night
Garden
Past
Flower
Book
Spend
Present
Geraniums
Days
Nights

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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We bury love Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.
Alexander Smith
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A man does not plant a tree for himself he plants it for posterity.
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Pleasure has no logic it never treads in its own footsteps.
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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.
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A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.
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The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.
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Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!
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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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Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
Alexander Smith
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A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
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To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
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Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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
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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears.
Alexander Smith
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Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.
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