Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past. Letitia Elizabeth Landon More Quotes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon More Quotes From Letitia Elizabeth Landon There are no weaknesses which we so thoroughly despise as those to which ourselves have yielded. Letitia Elizabeth Landon There is a steep and lofty wall, Where my warders trembling stand, He who at speed shall ride round its height, For him shall be my hand. Letitia Elizabeth Landon Water—the mighty, the pure, the beautiful, the unfathomable—where is thy element so glorious as it is in thine own domain, the deep seas ? What an infinity of power is in the far Atlantic, the boundary of two separate worlds, apart like those of memory and of hope ! or in the bright Pacific, whose tides are turned to gold by a southern sun, and in whose bosom sleep a thousand isles, each covered with the verdure, the flowers, and the fruit of Eden ! But, amid all thy hereditary kingdoms, to which hast thou given beauty, as a birthright, lavishly as thou hast to thy favourite Mediterranean ? The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky. The shadows of earth and earthly things, resting omen-like upon the waters, alone shewed which was the home and which the mirror of the celestial host. Letitia Elizabeth Landon When we trace to their source the most important circumstances of our life, in what trifles have they originated ! — a look, a word, are the ministers of fate. Letitia Elizabeth Landon Whether wealth bring the curse of selfishness along with it, or that the leaven was in our nature, only dormant till called forth by circumstances, we are only too apt to misuse it, even as others have done before us. Letitia Elizabeth Landon While bills are being brought into the House of Commons to regulate every thing, from the sweeps crying "sweep," to "emancipation, vote by ballot, and free trade," is there no county member whose "time and talents'' are devoted to "domestic policy," who will bring in a bill "for the better regulation of the marriage ceremony," and put the canonical hours later in the day ? at all events, could there not be a special clause in favour of London ? A spring morning there is the very reverse of Thomson's description ; for "delicious mildness" read "a cutting east wind;" and for "veiled in roses" substitute "smoke and fog." The streets are given up to the necessities of life — to the milkman with his cans, the butcher with his tray, the baker with his basket ; all belong to the material portion of existence. Now, marriage is (or ought to be) an affair of affections, sentiments, &c. The legislature ought to give it the full benefit of moonlight and wax-candles. Letitia Elizabeth Landon Who, in after life, can help smiling at the fancies in which early anticipation revelled ; how absurd, how impossible, do they not now appear! Yet, in such mockery lurks much of bitterness : the laugh rings hollow from many a disappointment, and many a mortification. Letitia Elizabeth Landon A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee. Letitia Elizabeth Landon bee harvest gardening rose honey Were it not better to forget than to remember and regret? Letitia Elizabeth Landon better regret forget remember Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present. Letitia Elizabeth Landon never future nature life
