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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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Philosophy
Strictest
Justice
Truest
Success
Arena
Whole
Frequently
World
Accidents
Suppose
Wide
Failure
Sternest

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!
Alexander Smith
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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.
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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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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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The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in god and woman.
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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There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.
Alexander Smith
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There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
Alexander Smith
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In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
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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My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
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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.
Alexander Smith
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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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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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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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Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Alexander Smith
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To-day is always different from yesterday.
Alexander Smith
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Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
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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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