Alexander Smith
Alexander Smith
Sir Alexander Lockwood Smith KNZMis the current High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom and a former New Zealand politician who served as the 28th Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2008 to 2013. Smith is a member of the New Zealand National Party and served as a Member of Parliamentfrom 1984 until his retirement to pursue diplomatic roles in 2013. He represented first the Kaipara electorate and then Rodney, and has held a number of Cabinet...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1948
Alexander Smith quotes about
Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
A poem round and perfect as a star.
Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles.
It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.
The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality.
Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.
I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.
Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature.
We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.
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.
I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.
If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death.