Alexander Smith

“Everything is sweetened by risk.”

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

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

“We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.”

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

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

“The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.”

“The sea complains upon a thousand shores.”

“To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.”

“If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Books are a finer world within the world.”

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

“Trees are your best antiques.”

“How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.”

“A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.”