Alexander Smith

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

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

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.

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

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

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

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

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.

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