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ASAlexander Smith

31 collected words

Alexander Smith

Life dates: 1830 AD — 1867 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗deathlovemindlifeknowledgefriendshipjusticewealth

Quotations and sayings

08c. 1848 AD
On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace than have last winter’s snowflakes. This commonplace sequence and flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper when, at three o’clock, the red sun set in the purple mist.... Battles have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apples-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its newborn children, and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the churchyard.
Alexander Smith / quote
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09c. 1848 AD
I cannot say, in Eastern style, Where’er she treads the pansy blows; Nor call her eyes twin-stars, her smile A sunbeam, and her mouth a rose. Nor can I, as your bridegrooms do, Talk of my raptures. Oh, how sore The fond romance of twenty-two Is parodied ere thirty-four! To-night I shake hands with the past,— Familiar years, adieu, adieu! An unknown door is open cast, An empty future wide and new Stands waiting. O ye naked rooms, Void, desolate, without a charm, Will Love’s smile chase your lonely glooms, And drape your walls, and make them warm?
Alexander Smith / quote
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10c. 1848 AD
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. And the worst of all this is, that love and friendship may be the outcome of a certain condition of knowledge; increase the knowledge, and love and friendship beat their wings and go. Every man’s road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings. Intimacy is frequently the road to indifference; and marriage a parricide.
Alexander Smith / quote
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11c. 1848 AD
It is not the essayist’s duty to inform, to build pathways through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incidentally he may do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his duty, and should not be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily created to sing, although a whole choir of them may be baked in pies and brought to table; they were born to make music, although they may incidentally stay the pangs of vulgar hunger.... The essay should be pure literature as the poem is pure literature.
Alexander Smith / quote
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