Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

All profound truths startle you in the first announcement.

Hopes and regrets are the sweetest links of existence.

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.

In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbors are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.

There are words to paint the misery of love, but none to paint its happiness.

Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee.

Our first love-letter ... There is so much to be said, and which no words seems exactly to say - the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and the despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

Fame is bought by happiness.

The lover and the physician are each popular from the same cause - we talk to them of nothing but ourselves.

of all the follies that we can commit, the greatest is to hesitate.

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.[to feel unhappy you need the time to consider how your lot could be better]

A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical.

Occupation is one great source of enjoyment. No man, properly occupied, was ever miserable.

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

the fact is, that life is too short to be occupied by aught but the present - hope and remembrance are equally a waste of time.

I have no parting sigh to give, so take my parting smile.

In marriage, as in chemistry, opposites have often an attraction.

I will look on the stars and look on thee, and read the page of thy destiny.

Perhaps, from an innate desire of justification, sorrow always exaggerates itself. Memory is quite one of Job's friends; and the past is ever ready to throw its added darkness on the present.

Strange the affection which clings to inanimate objects - objects which cannot even know our love! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment.

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

Experience teaches, it is true; but she never teaches in time.

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.

it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.

The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye.

I do not think that life has a suspense more sickening than that of expecting a letter which does not come.

Social life is filled with doubts and vain aspirings; solitude, when the imagination is dethroned, is turned to weariness and ennui.

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are al ways prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

... true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity.

Childhood, whose very happiness is love.

Habit is a second nature, and what was at first pleasure, is next necessity.

Every other species of talent carries with it its eternity; we enjoy the work of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, only as thousands will do after us; but the actor - his memory is with his generation, and that passes away.

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past.

marriage is like money - seem to want it, and you never get it.

One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy.

Restraint is the golden rule of enjoyment.

How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.

who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?

Anticipation is a bad sleeping draught.

Curiosity and courtesy are very often at variance.

My heart is its own grave!

doubts, like facts, are stubborn things.

And this is woman's fate: all her affections are called into life by winning flatteries, and then thrown back upon themselves to perish; and her heart, her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness, is left to bleed or break!

The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs.