Samuel Laman Blanchard Quotes
1804–1845 England
Samuel Laman Blanchard (May 15, 1804 – February 15, 1845) was an English poet, essayist and journalist.
- England
- Essayists
- Journalists
- Poets
Also known as: Blanchard, Laman, Blanchard, Samuel Laman, Laman Blanchard
Random Samuel Laman Blanchard quote
33 quotes
As with the tender juvenile, who sets light to his frock, so with the sweet senior, who sets his fortunes on fire. Even in his maturer time, in his state of cinderhood, he still craves to be further consumed.
The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.
Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem;
There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence or of sound,
Some sprite begotten of a summer dream.
Sooth't were a pleasant life to lead,
With nothing in the world to do
But just to blow a shepherd's reed,
The silent season thro'
And just to drive a flock to feed,—
Sheep—quiet, fond and few!
Credulity lives next door to Gossip.
The scarcity of truth is atoned for by the abundance of affidavits; if a rumor be impugned, its veracity is easily strengthened by additional emphasis of affirmation, until at last "everybody says so," and then it is undeniable.
It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.
We feel bound to be punctual and conscientious with those we are indifferent about; while we can afford at any time, on the frostiest night, to be an hour after our appointment with the single gentleman who occupies an apartment in our heart's core.
Give me to live with Love alone
And let the world go dine and dress;
For Love hath lowly haunts...
If life's a flower, I choose my own—
'T is "love in Idleness".
Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation.
I must stop to lament, that we cannot evince an admiring gratitude towards other excellent things by a like readiness of quotation: that we cannot, for instance, quote a star that we have been watching; or a hue of sunset; or a friend's voice, and his shake of the hand (I had almost said heart); or a beautiful picture—a Claude or Titian, for example.
Two hats, we grant, may be better than one; yet is one enough at a time. It is so with the head. It should be sole and self-relying. We like to wear ours in single blessedness on our own shoulders, and not let it hanker after a place on other people's.
When a story has gone the grand circuit, and travels back to us uncontradicted, we may reasonably begin to relax in our belief of it. If nobody questions it, it is manifestly a fiction; if it passes current, it is almost sure to be a counterfeit. The course of truth never yet ran smooth.