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
Books are a finer world within the world.
In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.
Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.
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.
Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead
A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal liking.
A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life
My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest...
Death takes away the commonplace of life.