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
My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable.
There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age.... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade.
A poem round and perfect as a star.
To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,--just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots.
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
Books are a finer world within the world.
My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest...
Death takes away the commonplace of life.
To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
A brave soul is a thing which all things serve.