Alexander Smith

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.

The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they — and as taciturn.

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.

A great man is the man who does something for the first time.

A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.