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Alexander Smith

b: Kilmarnock, Scotland., Dec 31, 1830

d: Wardie, Scotland, Jan 5, 1867

Scottish. Poet. Essayist. Labelled spasmodic poet; known for essays in Dreamthorp, 1863.

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A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.

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.

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

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

A poem round and perfect as a star.

As a wild maiden, with love-drinking eyes, sees in sweet dreams a beaming youth of glory.

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

Each time we love, We turn a nearer and a broader mark To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.

Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!

Every man's road in life is marked by the grave of his personal likings.

Everything is sweetened by risk.

God is a worker: He has thickly strewn Infinity with grandeur: God is love: He shall wipe away creation's tears, And all the worlds shall summer in His smile.

He will go back to the old faith he learnt Beside his mother's knee.

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

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

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.

If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.

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

In winter, when the dismal rain Came down in slanting lines, And Wind, that grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines.

Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.

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

Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time Is England. England!

Some books are drenched sands, On which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, Like a wrecked argosy.

Speak no harsh, words of earth; she is our mother, and few of us her sons who have not added a wrinkle to her brow.

Sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.

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

The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.

The peasant thanked her with their tears, When food and clothes were given; "This is a joy," the lady said, "Saints cannot taste in heaven."

The saddest thing that can befall a soul. Is when it loses faith in God and woman.

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.

The skin of a man of letters is peculiarly sensitive to the bite of the critical mosquito; and he lives in a climate in which such mosquitos swarm. He is seldom stabbed to the heart--he is often killed by pin-pricks.

The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, "Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide."

The trees were gazing up into the sky, Their bare arms stretched in prayer for the snows.

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

To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

To our graves we walk In the thick footprints of departed men.

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

Trees are your best antiques.

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

We bury love, Forgetfulness grows over it like grass; That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.

We twain have met like the ships upon the sea, Who behold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet: One little hour! and then, away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.

When a man is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness.

When a man is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness.

[Memory is] a man's real possession...In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.