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Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.

Alexander Smith

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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Immortal
Style
Literature
Rather
Thought
Thing

More quotes by Alexander Smith

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The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.
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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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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The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore-- A shore that wears on her alluring brows Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, That blushed a tell-tale.
Alexander Smith
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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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Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
Alexander Smith
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The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
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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Every man's road in life is marked by the grave of his personal likings.
Alexander Smith
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Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.
Alexander Smith
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Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.
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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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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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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To-day is always different from yesterday.
Alexander Smith
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If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.
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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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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A poem round and perfect as a star.
Alexander Smith
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Trees are your best antiques
Alexander Smith