Walter Savage Landor Quotes & Sayings

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always. — Walter Savage Landor

Friendships are the purer and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the Sun not only of righteousness but of love. — 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

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

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

Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it. — Walter Savage Landor

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice. — Walter Savage Landor

Sculpture and painting are moments of life; poetry is life itself. — 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

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

In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him; what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing. — Walter Savage Landor

The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman. — Walter Savage Landor

In the morn of life we are alert, we are heated in its noon, and only in its decline do we repose. — Walter Savage Landor

Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: The rock and the herbage are of one substance to her. — 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

The deafest man can hear praise, and is slow to think any an excess. — 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

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

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us. — Walter Savage Landor

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

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose. — Walter Savage Landor

Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one — Walter Savage Landor

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library. — Walter Savage Landor

As we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way. — Walter Savage Landor

Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy. — 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

Belief in the future life is the appetite of reason. — Walter Savage Landor

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend. — 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

Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age. — Walter Savage Landor

Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude. — Walter Savage Landor

Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good. — 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

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

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it. — Walter Savage Landor

We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love. — Walter Savage Landor

The very beautiful rarely love at all; those precious images are placed above the reach of the passions: Time alone is permitted to efface them. — Walter Savage Landor

No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner. — 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

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another. — Walter Savage Landor

Many love music but for music's sake, Many because her touches can awake Thoughts that repose within the breast half-dead, And rise to follow where she loves to lead. What various feelings come from days gone by! What tears from far-off sources dim the eye! Few, when light fingers with sweet voices play, And melodies swell, pause, and melt away, Mind how at every touch, at every tone, A spark of life hath glistened and hath gone. — Walter Savage Landor

Those who in living fill the smallest space, In death have often left the greatest void. — Walter Savage Landor

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom. — Walter Savage Landor

We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain. — 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

When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus! — Walter Savage Landor

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound. — 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

Children are what the mothers are. — 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

Political men, like goats, usually thrive best among inequalities. — Walter Savage Landor

Circumstances form the character; but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form. — Walter Savage Landor

Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream. — 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

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

Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth. — Walter Savage Landor

There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from us. — Walter Savage Landor

And Modesty, who, when she goes,
Is gone for ever. — Walter Savage Landor

When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and groveling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home. — Walter Savage Landor

I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart. — Walter Savage Landor

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

Truth is a point, the subtlest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life blood, of those who press earnestly upon it. — Walter Savage Landor

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune. — Walter Savage Landor

Tyrants never perish from tyranny, but always from folly,-when their fantasies have built up a palace for which the earth has no foundation. — Walter Savage Landor

The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence. — Walter Savage Landor

Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another. — Walter Savage Landor

Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty. — Walter Savage Landor

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

Great men always pay deference to greater. — Walter Savage Landor

It appears to be among the laws of nature, that the mighty of intellect should be pursued and carped by the little, as the solitary flight of one great bird is followed by the twittering petulance of many smaller. — Walter Savage Landor

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

The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell. — Walter Savage Landor

Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds, and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life. — Walter Savage Landor

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable. — 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

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

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

Let me take up your metaphor. 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. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never. — Walter Savage Landor

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues. — 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

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. — Walter Savage Landor

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

O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream. — Walter Savage Landor

Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well-regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content. — 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

We talk on principal, but act on motivation. — Walter Savage Landor

We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone. — Walter Savage Landor

I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so. — Walter Savage Landor

Moroseness is the evening of turbulence. — 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

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him. — Walter Savage Landor

Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape must be trodden and the oil pressed. — Walter Savage Landor

Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always. — Walter Savage Landor

How sweet and sacred idleness is! — Walter Savage Landor

The vain poet is of the opinion that nothing of his can be too much: he sends to you basketful after basketful of juiceless fruit, covered with scentless flowers. — Walter Savage Landor

My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. — Walter Savage Landor

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace. — Walter Savage Landor