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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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Artist
Individuality
Doe
Depend
Greatness
Artists
Writers
Depends
Writer
Common
Peculiar

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.
Alexander Smith
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Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.
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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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
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We are never happy we can only remember that we were so once.
Alexander Smith
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Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
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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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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If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.
Alexander Smith
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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.
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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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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To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
Alexander Smith
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Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
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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Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
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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Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
Alexander Smith
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I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
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