ALEXANDER SMITH

The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in God and woman.

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

Books are a finer world within the world.

The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.

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.

To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

Everything is sweetened by risk.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.

How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.

We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.

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.

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.

The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.

A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

Trees are your best antiques.

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.