Alas Quotes - page 10
Curious it is that every hour of our day is repeated from myriad chimes; and yet how rarely do we attend to the clock striking! Alas! how emblematic is this of the way in which we neglect the many signs of time! How terrible, when we think of what time may achieve, is the manner in which we waste it! At the end of every man's life, at least three-quarters of the mighty element of which that life was composed will be found void-lost-nay, utterly forgotten! And yet that time, laboured and husbanded, might have built palaces, gathered wealth, and, still greater, made an imperishable name.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
Lay dust and ashes - for, this cold drear world
Is but thy prison-house. Alas for him
Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
The fatal ones that evil spirits give, -
Bright and bewildering, leading unto death.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas! when angry words begin
Their entrance on the lip to win;
When sullen eye and flushing cheek
Say more than bitterest tone could speak;
And look and word, than fire or steel,
Give wounds more deep,-time cannot heal;
And anger digs, with tauntings vain,
A gulf it may not pass again.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Alas! for him whose youthful fire
Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,-
Alas! for him who shall essay,
The laurel's long and dreary way!
Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
What a visionary thing is the independence of youth ! how full of projects, which take the shape of certainties ! How much of rugged and stern experience it requires to convince the young and the eager, that the efforts of an individual unaided by connexion or circumstance, are the true reading of the allegory of the Danaides : -industry and skill, alas, how often are they but water drawn with labour into a bucket full of holes !
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens There is no putting by that crown queens you must always be queens to your lovers queens to your husbands and sons queens of higher mystery to the world beyond.... But alas you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.
John Ruskin
