Walter Savage Landor Quotes

165 Sourced Quotes

Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.

Walter Savage Landor
Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.

Walter Savage Landor
There is a gravity which is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy nor dwells in contraction of heart: but arises from tenderness and hangs upon reflection.

Walter Savage Landor
Dignity, in private men and in governments, has been little else than a stately and stiff perseverance in oppression; and spirit, as it is called, little else than the foam of hard-mouthed insolence.

Walter Savage Landor
Sculpture and painting are moments of life; poetry is life itself.

Walter Savage Landor
I see the rainbow in the sky, the dew upon the grass; I see them, and I ask not why they glimmer or they pass. With folded arms I linger not to call them back; 'twere vain: In this, or in some other spot, I know they'll shine again.

Walter Savage Landor
Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal is sought the most ardently, and loved the longest.

Walter Savage Landor
Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.

Walter Savage Landor
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.

Walter Savage Landor
Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory, is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout.

Walter Savage Landor
We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

Walter Savage Landor
Justice is often pale and melancholy; but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits and the bloom of loveliness.

Walter Savage Landor
A critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in consequence of this detection, be presumes to place himself on a level with genius.

Walter Savage Landor
States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

Walter Savage Landor
Every witticism is an inexact thought; that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.

Walter Savage Landor
A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

Walter Savage Landor
Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.

Walter Savage Landor
Kings play at war unfairly with republics; they can only lose some earth, and some creatures they value as little, while republics lose in every soldier a part of themselves.

Walter Savage Landor
A wise man will always be a Christian, because the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches.

Walter Savage Landor
We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.

Walter Savage Landor
Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but, Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet.

Walter Savage Landor
Cruelty, if we consider it as a crime, is the greatest of all; if we consider it as a madness, we are equally justifiable in applying to it the readiest and the surest means of oppression.

Walter Savage Landor
Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.

Walter Savage Landor
The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's.

Walter Savage Landor
That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.

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
A great man knows the value of greatness; he dares not hazard it, he will not squander it.

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
The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.

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