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Horace Smith Quotes

d. 1849 England

Horace Smith (born Horatio; December 31, 1779 – July 12, 1849) was an English poet and novelist (as was his elder brother, James Smith), perhaps best known for his participation in a sonnet-writing competition with Percy Bysshe Shelley.

England
Poets

Random Horace Smith quote

8 quotes

Vanity—like laudanum, and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large quantities. No man, who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.

The Tin Trumpet (1836)

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything and everything is nought.

Our charity begins at home,
And mostly ends where it begins.

In the name of the Prophet—figs.

Perhaps thou wert a priest,—if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

In losing fortune, many a lucky elf
Has found himself.

And thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Ozymandias (1818)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Horace Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.