Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker
“The first, the very first; oh! none
Can feel again as they have done;
In love, in war, in pride, in all
The planets of life's coronal,
However beautiful or bright,—
What can be like their first sweet light?”
Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
“My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.”
“I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”
Source: Collected Stories
Inez from The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)
I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 275
Simple Verses (1891)
Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 4
Frankenstein (1818)
Context: No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”
pg 8
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight