Alexander Smith

Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.

My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.

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

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.

Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.

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

If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.

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

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.