Walter Savage Landor Quotes

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

The heart that once has been bathed in love's pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it you are unhappy, if you accept it you are undone.

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.

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.

True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another.

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

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

Great men always pay deference to greater.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.

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

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

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.

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.

The assailant is often in the right; that the assailed is always.

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

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.

Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.

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

Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same.

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

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

Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess.

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

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.

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

The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.

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

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

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

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.

Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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