Walter Savage Landor Quotes

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.

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.

In the hours of distress and misery, the eyes of every mortal turn to friendship; in the hours of gladness and conviviality, what is our want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet or sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A friend.

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.

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

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words.

An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.

Men universally are ungrateful towards him who instructs them, unless, in the hours or in the intervals of instruction, he presents a sweet-cake to their self-love.

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

He who first praises a book becomingly is next in merit to the author.

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.

Hope is the mother of faith.

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.

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.

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

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.

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.

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.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved--is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.

The worse of ingratitude lies not in the ossified heart of him who commits it, but we find it in the effect it produces on him against whom it was committed.

Political men, like goats, usually thrive best among inequalities.

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.

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

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.

The highest price we can pay for anything; is to ask it.

A little praise is good for a shy temper; it teaches it to rely on the kindness of others.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

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

We listen to those whom we know to be of the same opinion as ourselves, and we call them wise for being of it; but we avoid such as differ from us.

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.

Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws.

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.

Cats ask plainly for what they want.

Little men build up great ones, but the snow colossus soon melts; the good stand under the eye of God, and therefore stand.

We talk on principal, but act on motivation.

The religion of Christ is peace and good-will,--the religion of Christendom is war and ill-will.

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

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.

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.

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

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

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.