SMITH, Albert Quotes
(1816-1860), English author
Those playful fancies of the mighty sky.
It is difficult to tell to what end we keep these old memorials, for their perusal affords, in most cases, but little pleasure. Many are never looked at again, and yet we could not destroy them without a struggle; others only bring forward evidences of words broken, hopes chilled, and friendships gradually dissolved; of old attachments turned away, and stubborn contradiction of all the trusting in futurity, whose promise we once clung to. One class alone of them can call up our best feelings. If the almost forgotten memorials of the once dearly loved and long departed can carry our sympathies away from the cold, hard present, over intervening years of struggling and vexatious toil, to that almost holy period of the gone and past, calling up old thoughts and old affections; or soothing, by one lonely, unsuspected burst of tears, overcharged hearts, which have long required easing of their burthen,— there is yet enough—there is more than enough—in these old letters, to plead an excuse for so sacredly preserving them.
Tears are the safety-valves of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.
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