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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
Night
Library
Past
Garden
Book
Flower
Spend
Present
Geraniums
Days
Nights

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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears.
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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 dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
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God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur.
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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.
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Every day travels toward death the last only arrives at it.
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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.
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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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The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.
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A poem round and perfect as a star.
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To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
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Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.
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Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo--from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate at.
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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.
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I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.
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How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.
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Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
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An old novel has a history of its own.
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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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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.
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