Walter Savage Landor Quotes

165 Sourced Quotes

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.

Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Walter Savage Landor
Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do; they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart.

Walter Savage Landor
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.

Walter Savage Landor
How delightful it is to see a friend after a length of absence! How delightful to chide him for that length of absence to which we owe such delight.

Walter Savage Landor
I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing.

Walter Savage Landor
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.

Walter Savage Landor
The tomb is the pedestal of greatness. I make a distinction between God's great and the king's great.

Walter Savage Landor
I would recommend a free commerce both of matter and mind. I would let men enter their own churches with the same freedom as their own houses; and I would do it without a homily or graciousness or favor, for tyranny itself is to me a word less odious than toleration.

Walter Savage Landor
God made the rose out of what was left of woman at the creation. The great difference is, we feel the rose's thorns when we gather it; and the other's when we have had it for some time.

Walter Savage Landor
I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
And find Ianthe's name agen.

Walter Savage Landor
Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

Walter Savage Landor
Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite. One kind of it suits one man, another kind another. The elevated mind takes in and breathes out again that which would be uncongenial to the baser; and the baser draws life and enjoyment from that which would be putridity to the loftier.

Walter Savage Landor
The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.

Walter Savage Landor
We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.

Walter Savage Landor
Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.

Walter Savage Landor
Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after.

Walter Savage Landor
Friendship may sometimes step a few paces in advance of truth.

Walter Savage Landor
It often comes into my head That we may dream when we are dead, But I am far from sure we do. O that it were so! then my rest Would be indeed among the blest; I should for ever dream of you.

Walter Savage Landor
No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be.

Walter Savage Landor
We care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster, and make as much noise and bustle as we can; but if the kindest and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and covert.

Walter Savage Landor
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.

Walter Savage Landor
Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the bier.

Walter Savage Landor
No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that of woman for woman.

Walter Savage Landor
We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.

Walter Savage Landor
A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.

Walter Savage Landor
Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.

Walter Savage Landor
To my ninth decade I have totter'd on, And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; She, who once led me where she would, is gone, So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

Walter Savage Landor
Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best.

Walter Savage Landor
I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.

Walter Savage Landor