Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Quotes about life

“I loved him as young Genius loves,
When its own wild and radiant heaven
Of starry thought burns with the light,
The love, the life, by passion given.
I loved him, too, as woman loves--
Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn:
Life had no evil destiny
That, with him, I could not have borne!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Title Poem
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Life , Light , Passion

“Strength, power, and majesty, belong to man;
They make the glory native to his life;
But sweetness is a woman's attribute —
By that she has reigned, and by that will reign.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Empire of Woman' — Schiller.
Translations, From the German

Life

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Life , Family , Home , History

“Upon the sunny grass-plot stood the dial,
Whose measured time strange contrast with ours made :
Ah! was it omen of life's after trial,
That even then the hours were told in shade,
In the old, old times,
The dear old times?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1837 3) (Vol 51) The Old Times
The Monthly Magazine

Life , Grass , Time

“Life is but the spirit's prison,
Where its wings are furl'd,
Stretching to their flight in vain, —
Seeking that eternal home
Which is in a world to come.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1837 2) (Vol 50) Subjects for Pictures. Alexander on The Banks of the Hyphasis
The Monthly Magazine

Life , World , Home

“Oh, fame is as the moon above,
Whose sun of light and life is love.
There is more in the smile of one gentle eye
Then the thousand pages of history;
Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise.
Take the gems in glory's coronal,
And one smile of beauty is worth them all.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Inez from The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Life , Smile , Beauty

“A word — a name —
Conjures the past before me, till it grows
More actual than the present : that — I see
But with the common eyes of daily life,
Imperfect and impatient; but the past
Out of imagination works its truth,
And grows distinct with poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

(1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures
The Monthly Magazine

Life , Truth , Imagination , Past

“[From Ernest von Hermanstadt]; Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine—so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny: it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just begun. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins—a brilliant light dances around it—it is bright—it is beautiful—and it is consumed! What remains?—A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blackened ashes! What more will remain of the heart?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Monthly Magazine

Life , World , Beauty , Art

“I know a lovely little flower, a flower for which I pine —
I would go gather it, but bars my heavy hours confine;
Oh, grief, when free, how easily that little flower was mine!
...
Oh, were I sinking to the grave I often ask in vain,
And welcome Death stood by to loose the wasted captive's chain —
Ah, name me the Forget-me-not, I'd wake to life again!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Lovely Little Flower' — Goethe.
Translations, From the German

Love , Life , Death , Flowers

“Strange, that ignorance should be our best happiness in this life, and yet be the one we are ever striving to destroy!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life , Happiness

“It was an epoch in my life, it is an epoch in every child's life, the first reading of Robinson Crusoe.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Life , Reading

“Let music make less terrible
The silence of the dead;
I care not, so my spirit last
Long after life has fled.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Source: The Venetian Bracelet (1829), Lines of Life