Letitia Elizabeth Landon quotes - page 32
I have all my life been an indweller of the town, and I frankly confess, for a constant residence, I like it better than all the pastoral charms that ever made the morality of an essay, or gave grace to poetry ; still there is that about the country to which the heart always turns with a feeling of freshness and renovation. The moonlight walk through the green wood, would come back upon the memory with a spell which would not belong to a lamp-lighted ramble. The green-leaf would give its freshness, the wild-flower its sweetness ; on the ear would arise the murmur of the wind in the boughs - or the song of the brook singing like a child for very gladness.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
We all know that there is evil in the world - we read of it - we hear of it - but we never think of its entering our own charmed circle. Look round our circle of acquaintance; how it would startle us to be asked to name one whom we thought capable of crime; how much more so to find that crime had been committed by one near and dear to our inmost heart. What a moral revulsion would such a discovery produce - how weak we should find ourselves under such a trial - how soon we should begin to disconnect the offender and the offence ; then, for the first time, we should begin to understand the full force of temptation, and to allow for its fearful strength ; and should we not begin to excuse what had never before seemed capable of palliation?
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
If you give an opinion in favour of one, you still offend both ; for it is a physological quality in quarrels conjugal, that though each considers the other to blame, they will not allow you to think so too ; moreover, the chances are, that, in your own private opinion, they are both wrong - a most unpopular verdict to pronounce.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
In the very lowest class it is well to be bred up amid those scenes wherein our future is cast ; nothing ever supplies the place of those early associations - nothing ever knits the heart to the place of its birth like the remembrances of childhood - nothing can give the entire knowledge of a people, but having been brought up among them.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Youth is frank, eager, and prone to believe in the good ; it looks round, and it sees flowers ; it looks up and sees stars ; evil appears impossible, because it does not seem to be in ourselves. It remains for after and weary years to teach us, that even the young and the innocent may be led into crime by the strong influence of temptation. Passion first, and interest afterwards, lures the feet of men into dark and crooked paths, which none in earlier and holier hours deemed they could tread. We may have been often deceived, but it is not until we ourselves begin to deceive that we dread deceit.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves ; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle. Half the works that constitute the charm of our leisure, that give their own interest to the long November evening, or add to the charm of a summer noon beneath the greenwood tree, are the offspring of poverty and of pain. ... How often is the writer obliged to put his own trouble, his suffering, or his sorrow aside, to finish the task ! The hand may tremble, the eyes fill with unbidden tears, and the temples throb with feverish pain, yet how often is there some hard and harsh necessity, which says, "the work must be done.”.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
