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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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Always
Heightened
Would
Feed
Life
Sorry
Business
Death
House
Immeasurably
Care
Clothe
Live
Solemnity

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Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
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I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
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We have two lives The soul of man is like the rolling world, One half in day, the other dipt in night The one has music and the flying cloud, The other, silence and the wakeful stars.
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Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
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Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
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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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In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.
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Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.
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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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A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
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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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The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide.
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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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The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.
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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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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.
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The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.
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To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
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A poem round and perfect as a star.
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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.
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