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An old novel has a history of its own.

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Novel
Fiction
History

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.
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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My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable.
Alexander Smith
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A poem round and perfect as a star.
Alexander Smith
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Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
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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Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
Alexander Smith
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We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.
Alexander Smith
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I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
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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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.
Alexander Smith
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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.
Alexander Smith
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Everything is sweetened by risk.
Alexander Smith
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If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
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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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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There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
Alexander Smith
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If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.
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.
Alexander Smith
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Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!
Alexander Smith