Quote

It is said that ridicule is the test of truth but it is never applied except when we wish to deceive ourselves - when if we cannot exclude the light, we would fain draw the curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny and wretched must that state of mind be, that wishes to take refuge in doubt.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Age: 36 †
Born: 1802
Born: August 14
Died: 1838
Died: October 15
Editor
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Chelsea
London
Letitia Landon
L. E. L.
Letitia Maclean
Letitia Elizabeth Maclean
Would
Cannot
Tests
Ridicule
Light
Deny
Deceiving
Fain
Truth
Draws
Wretched
Sneer
States
Spring
Applied
Exclude
Take
Except
Refuge
Curtain
Must
Doubt
Wishes
Deceive
Mind
State
Test
Springs
Never
Wish
Draw
Curtains

More quotes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Image
When does the mind put forth its powers? when are the stores of memory unlocked? when does wit 'flash from fluent lips?' -- when but after a good dinner? Who will deny its influence on the affections? Half our friends are born of turbots and truffles.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
To this hour, the great science and duty of politics is lowered by the petty leaven of small and personal advantage.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty secondly, either that of admiration or fault-finding - the latter a very animated enjoyment.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Alas! we makeA ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolvesLook down upon our slumbering acts.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Whenever I hear a man talking of the advantages of our ill-used sex, I look upon it as the prelude to some new act of authority.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
I would give worlds, could I believe One-half that is profess'd me Affection! could I think it Thee, When Flattery has caress'd me.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
In our road through life we may happen to meet with a man casting a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of another which stone he has carried in his bosom to sling against that very other's head.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Politeness, however, acts the lady's maid to our thoughts and they are washed, dressed, curled, rouged, and perfumed, before they are presented to the public.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
of all the follies that we can commit, the greatest is to hesitate.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others!
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true without it, we are little, false, and mean.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
Conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
The very effort to forget teaches us to remember.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Image
A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon