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
The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.
Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.
In winter, when the dismal rain Comes down in slanting lines, And Wind, that grand old harper, smote His thunder-harp of pines.
Every man's road in life is marked by the grave of his personal likings.
My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
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.
Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.
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.
Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.
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.
There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.
The saddest thing that befalls a soul is when it loses faith in god and woman.