Walter Savage Landor Quotes

165 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Walter Savage Landor
Be assured that, although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice or a deficiency of what, in physics, is called excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, with patriotism, or with virtue.

Walter Savage Landor
All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be frequented for exercise than for weight.

Walter Savage Landor
Vast objects of remote altitude must be looked at a long while before they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope tubes that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare; and generations of men serve but a single witness to his claims.

Walter Savage Landor
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

Walter Savage Landor
Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.

Walter Savage Landor
The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.

Walter Savage Landor
Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike of others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.

Walter Savage Landor
Old trees in their living state are the only things that money cannot command.

Walter Savage Landor
If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt, if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius; and Fancy herself would lie muffled up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated.

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
He who brings ridicule to bear against truth finds in his hand a blade without a hilt.

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
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 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