Quote

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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Alexander Smith
Age: 36 †
Born: 1830
Born: December 31
Died: 1867
Died: January 5
Poet
Cille Mheàrnaig
Take
Rewards
Idlers
Giving
Smile
Approving
Kind
Accepting
Accepts
Willing
Benevolent
Pleasure
Services
Word
Reward
Moments
Vanity
Give
Sufficient
Idler

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Good-humor and, generosity carry day with the popular heart all the world over.
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There is a certain even-handed justice in Time and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul.
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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.
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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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A poem round and perfect as a star.
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The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.
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The only thing a man knows is himself.
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Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
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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.
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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.
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Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!
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Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.
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There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears.
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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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Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
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The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.
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It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.
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The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
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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.
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