Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Trending quotes (page 28)

“Literature soon becomes a power, not what it once was, a passion; but literary success, like all others, is only to be obtained, and retained, by labour — and labour and inclination do not always go together. Take all our most eminent writers, and the quantity of work, hard work, they have got through, will be found enormous and perpetual. Literature, as a profession, allows little leisure, and less indulgence.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Literature , Passion , Success

“Death’s a fearful thing when we must count its steps!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Improvisatrice (1824)

Death , Fear

“It must, however, be admitted, that the hard circumstances form the strong character, as the cold climes of the north nurture a race of men, whose activity and energies leave those of the south far behind. Hence it is that the characters of women are more uniform than men; they are rarely placed in circumstances to call forth the latent powers of the mind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Literary Remains

Women , Men , Strong

“[After]
Burnt to the dust, an ashy heap
Was every cottage round;—
I listened, but I could not hear
One single human sound:”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Glencoe from The London Literary Gazette (12th July 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“AY, screen thy favourite dove, fair child,
Ay, screen it if you may,—
Yet I misdoubt thy trembling hand
Will scare the hawk away.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

A Child Screening a Dove from a Hawk. By Stewartson
The Troubadour (1825)

“Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
Lay dust and ashes — for, this cold drear world
Is but thy prison-house. Alas for him
Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
The fatal ones that evil spirits give, —
Bright and bewildering, leading unto death.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(26th July 1823) The Artist’s Studio
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Death , World , Evil , Housing

“This volume was written for children. Miss Landon set out its purpose in the preface.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Children

“For misery, like a masquer, mocks at all
In which it has no part, or one of gall”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Rose
The Golden Violet (1827)

Parting

“For his was now the loveliest part
Of the young poet's life, when first,
In solitude and silence nurst,
His genius rises like a spring
Unnoticed in its wandering;
Ere winter cloud or summer ray
Have chill'd, or wasted it away”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Canto I
The Troubadour (1825)

Life , Spring , Solitude , Silence

“Perfect equality, and perfect despotism, are theories equally unreducible to practice; but there are many fine sentiments belonging to the first, and there is singular fascination in a fine sentiment—we pay ourselves a compliment by uttering it.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Other Gift Books

Perfection

“I have won him, and shall keep him; for to his weak temper habit will be as fetters of iron. I have won him — but how? He remembered not the earnest and devoted love of the young heart, which was his, and his only. Even my beauty failed to influence his selfish carelessness : but he is mine by a more potent spell. Love may be given in vain,— beauty may be powerless; but I have mastered by the deeper magic of flattery.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Other Gift Books

Love , Beauty , Heart , Selfishness

“For a discussion of some of the contents of this significant cultural volume, see Adriana Craciun, ‘Fatal Women of Romanticism’, Cambridge University Press, 2004, page 204. The section ‘The Enchantress’ here begins by describing that first story as a ‘self-consciously Byronic text’ that ‘develops a Promethean, distinctly Luciferian model of poetic identity and self-creation’.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Women , Universe

“Ridicule is the re-action of enthusiasm. Sentiment was considered confined to schools; and, so far from affecting too much feeling, people were beginning to be ashamed of having any.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

People , School , Feeling

“It is a fearful responsibility, the exercise of influence : let our own conduct bring its own consequences — we may well meet the worst; not so when we have led another to pursue any given line of action : if they suffer, how tenfold is that suffering visited on ourselves!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Fear , Exercises , Suffering

“Had my eye never on the beauty dwelt
Of human face, and my ear never drank
The music of a human voice; I feel
My spirit would have pour'd itself in song,
Have learn'd a language from the rustling leaves,
The singing of the birds, and of the tide.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

Beauty , Music , Feeling , Bird

“Such as the lute, touch'd by no hand
Save by an angel's, wakes and weeps,
Such is the sound that now to land
From the charmed water sweeps.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
The Golden Violet (1827)

Angels , Water

“He painted till the lamps grew dim, his hand
Scarce conscious what it wrought; at length his lids
Closed in a heavy slumber, and he dream'd
That a fair creature came and kissed his brow,
And bade him follow her: he knew the look,
And rose. Awakening, he found himself
Kneeling before the portrait:—'twas so fair
He deemed it lived, and press'd his burning lips
To the sweet mouth; his soul pass'd in that kiss,—
Young Guido died beside his masterpiece!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Painter. from The London Literary Gazette: 15th November 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch I.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Soul , Kiss , Painting

“Love may be increased with fears,
May be fanned with sighs,
Nurst by fancies, fed by doubts
But without Hope it dies!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Love, Hope and Beauty
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Fear , Hope

“the hollow voice
Of that old crone, the only living sound;
Her face, on which mortality has writ
Its closing, with the wan and bony hand,
Raised like a spectre's—and yourself the while,
Cold from the midnight chill, and white with fear,
Your large blue eyes darker and larger grown
With terror's chain'd attention, and your breath
Suppress'd for very earnestness.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Ancestress (Spoken by Jaromir to Bertha)
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Fear

“Who does not know the restlessness of an anticipated arrival?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)