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Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L.

✵ 14. August 1802 – 15. October 1838
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon: 785   quotes 11   likes

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

“There are always an ample sufficiency of compassionate neighbours ready to console one who, by common consent, is styled "the disconsolate widower.””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

“Thy voice is sweet, as if it took
Its music from thy face.
And word and mien, and step and look,
Are perfect in their grace.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Poetical Portrait V
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Music , Perfection

“But the tyranny of custom, like all other tyrannies, when grown quite unbearable—for it is wonderful what people will endure-; had already sown the seeds of its own dissolution. Out of the hardship had grown the repining, and to repine at the exercise of an alleged right is soon to question its authority, and the first question asked shakes the whole ancient and time-honoured fabric of privilege.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Other Gift Books

People , Exercises , Question , Time

“Gentlest one, I bow to thee,
Rose-lipp'd queen of poesy,
Sweet Erato, thou whose chords
Waken but for love-touched words!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(9th August 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Stothard’s Erato
23rd August 1823) Change see The Improvisatrice (1824
30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823) The Bayadere see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love

“Let the rose fall, another rose
Will bloom upon the self-same tree;
Let the bird die, ere evening close
Some other bird will sing for me.
It is for the beloved to love,
'Tis for the happy to be kind;
Sorrow will more than death remove
The associate links affections bind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(2nd April 1831) Lines Supposed to be the Prayer of the Supplicating Nymph in Mr. Lawrence Macdonald’s Exhibition of Sculptures
The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Love , Death , Bird , Tree

“Oh, there are evil moments in our life,
When but a thought, a word, a look, has power
To dash the cup of happiness aside,
And stamp us wretched!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life , Evil , Happiness

“Love has no power to look forward — the delicious consciousness of the present, a faint but delightful shadow of the past, form its eternity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(18th August 1822) These from a prose sketch - Isadore
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Love , Past

“Farewell, and when to-morrow
Seems little, like to-day,
And we find life's deepest sorrow
Melts gradual away;
Yet do not quite forget me.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1837 1) (Vol. 49) Songs - I.
The Monthly Magazine

Life , Forgetting

“And you, my fine poet, who thought that the earth
To another such minstrel could never give birth,
Already your works are all thrown on the shelf,
And their author condemn'd as an ignorant elf.—
Yes; look thro' the world, and this truth you will find
That, once out of sight, you are soon out of mind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Fable (Imitated from the French of La Motte.)
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Truth , World , Birth

“The clouds, and not the stars, to them
The omen and the sign be given—
The clouds, the vapours of our soil,
Not stars, whose element is heaven.
The deepening shade, the flitting light,
Mark what each coming month will know—
The passing joy, the constant care,
Of life's sad pilgrimage below.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Life , Sadness , Star , Light

“There is no tie
Like that last holiest link of love, which binds
The lonely child to its more lonely parent.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(5th July 1823) A Tale Founded on Fact
12th July 1823) Glencoe see The Vow of the Peacock (1835
(19th July 1823) Execution of Crescentius see The Improvisatrice (1824) Crescentius
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love , Parent

“Many a head that down had lain,
Impatient with its twelve hours' pain,
And wishing that the bed it prest,
Were, as the grave's, a long last rest,
Has sprung again at morning's call,
Forgiving, or forgetting all;
Lighting the weary weight of thought
With colours from the day-break brought,
Reading new promise in the sky,
And hearing Hope, the lark on high.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pain , Hope , Forgiveness , Light

“Now a nation’s character is in its literature.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Literature

“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

No.19. The Abbot — MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
Literary Remains

People , Birth , Knowledge , Future

“Ah! love and song are but a dream,
A flower's faint shade on life's dark stream.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

All from The Vow of the Peacock (Title Poem - Introduction)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love , Life , Dreams , Flowers

“THE fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind;
Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
Away in the distance is heard the vast sound,
From the streets of the city that compass it round,
Like the echo of mountains, or ocean's deep call;
Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Middle Temple Gardens
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Dreams , Hope , Mountain , Singing

“Oh, what am I, and what are they?
Masquers but striving to deceive
Themselves and others; and believe
It is enough, if none shall know
The covered mass of care below.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - title poem - introduction
The Golden Violet (1827)

“He who seeks pleasure with reference to himself, not others, will ever find that pleasure is only another name for discontent.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Pleasure

“The sudden start, the rapid step once more,
As if it would annihilate the time:
But who may paint the solitude of crime?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Title poem, section IX.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Solitude , Time , Painting

“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

“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)

“The sunshine of the morning
Is abroad upon the hills,
With the singing of the green-wood leaves,
And of a thousand rills.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

One Day
The Golden Violet (1827)

Singing

“The timid temper lives in perpetual terror, the nobler one braces itself to endure when ever the appointed time shall come.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Literary Remains

Time

“She was tall beyond the ordinary height of woman, but stately in her grace as the ideal of a queen and the reality of a swan. Her arms and feet were bare, but for the gems which encircled them. A white robe swept around her in folds gathered at the waist by a golden girdle inscribed with signs and characters. Her hair was singularly thick, and of that purple blackness seen on the grape and the neck of the raven — black, with a sort of azure bloom upon it. It was fastened in large folds, which went several times round the head, and these were adorned with jewels and precious stones, like a midnight lighted with stars. Her complexion was a pale pure olive, perfectly colourless, but delicate as that of a child. Her mouth was the only spot where the rose held dominion, and lips of richer crimson never opened to the morning.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Star , Reality , Light , Time

“Beautiful language! Love's peculiar, own,
But only to the spring and summer known.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Oriental Nosegay. By Pickersgill
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Beauty , Spring , Summer

“I numbered years of pain and distress,
And but fourteen days of happiness.
Mortal, nor pleasure, nor wealth, nor power,
Are more than the toys of a passing hour;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Eastern King
The Golden Violet (1827)

Pain , Pleasure , Wealth , Happiness

“Praise — actual personal praise— oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Personality

“A woman always exaggerates her beauty and its influence when they are past; and it was a perpetual grief to think what her pretty face might have done for her.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Beauty , Thinking , Past

“The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Sadness , History

“Dreary it is the path to trace,
Step by step of sin's wild race.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Golden Violet - The Ring
The Golden Violet (1827)

“There is no attachment stronger, more unselfish, than the love between brother and sister, thrown on the world orphans at an early age, with none to love them save each other. They feel how much they stand alone, and this draws them more together. Constant intercourse has given that perfect understanding which only familiarity can do; hopes, interests, sorrows, are alike in common. Each is to either a source of pride; it is the tenderness of love without its fears, and the confidence of marriage, without its graver and more anxious character. The fresh impulses of youth are all warm about the heart.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Marriage , Youth , Age

“Communication is in itself civilization; we wear away our own prejudices only by contact with those of others. We are forced into making allowances, by seeing how much we need that they should be made for ourselves.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Communication