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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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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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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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If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.
Alexander Smith
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Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.
Alexander Smith
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The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.
Alexander Smith
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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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If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.
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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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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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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A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.
Alexander Smith
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Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
Alexander Smith
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One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.
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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Winter does not work only on a broad scale he is careful in trifles.
Alexander Smith
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Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
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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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 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