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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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Characteristics
Till
Recognize
Pleasure
Gone
Never
Characteristic

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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.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.
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A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
Alexander Smith
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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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How beautiful the yesterday that stood Over me like a rainbow! I am alone, The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.
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.
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A man does not plant a tree for himself he plants it for posterity.
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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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The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.
Alexander Smith
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Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.
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Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
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The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
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's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
Alexander Smith
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Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
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A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.
Alexander Smith