Alexander Smith may refer to:
How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.
To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.
In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.
The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.
In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past.
A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.
I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.
Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
Good-humor and, generosity carry day with the popular heart all the world over.
We have two lives; The soul of man is like the rolling world, One half in day, the other dipt in night; The one has music and the flying cloud, The other, silence and the wakeful stars.
Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.
How beautiful the yesterday that stood Over me like a rainbow! I am alone, The past is past. I see the future stretch All dark and barren as a rainy sea.
The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.
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.
Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.
Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.
Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.
Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.