Walter Savage Landor - Imaginary Conversations

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

Walter Savage Landor
Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance.

Walter Savage Landor
We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.

Walter Savage Landor
There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts.

Walter Savage Landor
Cruelty in all countries is the companion of anger; but there is only one, and never was another on the globe, where she coquets both with anger and mirth.

Walter Savage Landor
Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would.

Walter Savage Landor
It has been my fortune to love in general those men most who have thought most differently from me, on subjects wherein others pardon no discordance. I think I have no more right to be angry with a man, whose reason has followed up a process different from what mine has, and is satisfied with the result, than with one who has gone to Venice while I am at Siena, and who writes to me that he likes the place.

Walter Savage Landor
Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness and true glory.

Walter Savage Landor
Harmonious words render ordinary ideas acceptable; less ordinary, pleasant; novel and ingenious ones, delightful. As pictures and statues, and living beauty, too, show better by music-light, so is poetry irradiated, vivified, glorified', and raised into immortal life by harmony.

Walter Savage Landor
I delight in the diffusion of learning; yet, I must confess it, I am most gratified and transported at finding a large quantity of it in one place; just as I would rather have a solid pat of butter at breakfast, than a splash of grease upon the table-cloth that covers half of it.

Walter Savage Landor
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

Walter Savage Landor
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may.

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
What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller?

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

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

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

Walter Savage Landor