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.
My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest...
Death takes away the commonplace of life.
In winter, when the dismal rain comes down in slanting lines, and wind, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines.
Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life
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.