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Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Also
Character
Best
Real
Men
World
Stage
Alone
Comes

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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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.
Alexander Smith
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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.
Alexander Smith
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In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.
Alexander Smith
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Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.
Alexander Smith
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A man does not plant a tree for himself he plants it for posterity.
Alexander Smith
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A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.
Alexander Smith
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God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur.
Alexander Smith
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Everything is sweetened by risk.
Alexander Smith
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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.
Alexander Smith
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The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
Alexander Smith
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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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To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
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.
Alexander Smith
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There is a certain even-handed justice in Time and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul.
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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Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
Alexander Smith
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Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.
Alexander Smith
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I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
Alexander Smith
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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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I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.
Alexander Smith