Walter Savage Landor famous quotes

There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Humanity #Earth #Divine

We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Happiness #Happy #Wish

What is reading but silent conversation?
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Reading #Silent #Conversation

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

#Library #Exploring

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Happiness

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.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Perfect #Cooking #Brain

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

#Oil #Childhood #Age

Cats like men are flatterers.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Cat #Men #Flattery

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

#Motivational #World #Sole

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

#Men #Vanity #Justice

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

#Heart #Understanding #May

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Music #Song #Waiting

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Music #Art #Inspiration

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Love #Anger #Flames

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

#Hands #Weight #Bears

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

#Thinking #Ideas #Together

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

#Past #Notes #Music Is

There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Soul #Doe #Eloquence

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

#Men #House #Mind

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Time #Dust #Sublime

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

#Flower #Too Much #Fruit

It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Looks #Easy #Difficulty

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Anger #Men #Overcoming

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

#Nature #Future #Littles

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

#Friendship #Girl #Hatred

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

#Wise #Block #Men

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

#Punishment #Toes #Nails

Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Power #Missing #May

The deafest man can hear praise, and is slow to think any an excess.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Men #Thinking #Excess

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Future #Looks #Human Nature

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

#Writing #Profound #Looks

The assailant is often in the right; the assailed is always.
-- Walter Savage Landor

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

#Sound #Wells

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

#Writing #Men #Thinking

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

#Art #Men #Desire

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

#Hurt #Truth #Blood

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

#Tyrants #Earth #Palaces

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

#Hate #Care #Fit

True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Fall #Men #Wit

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

#Moving #Writing #Fields

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

#Philosophy #School #Exercise

Consult duty not events.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Events #Duty

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Strife #Quarrels

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Wise #Wisdom #Writing

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

#Wise #Praise #Applause

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

#Noise #Care #Affection

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

#Men #Political #Goats

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

#Death #Firsts #Pillow

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

#Faults #Genius #Levels

Contentment is better than divinations or visions.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Vision #Contentment

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

#War #Religion #Christ

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

#Character #Matter #Form

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

#Beauty #Order #Grace

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Disappointment #Ambition #Wheels

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Hero #Ambition #Pestilence

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

#Ridicule

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

#Hands #Bears #Blades

There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Pride #Men #Proud

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

#Kindness #Littles #Shy

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.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Want #Rooms #Suspicion

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

#Kings #Greatness #Pedestal

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

#Home #Feelings #Mind

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

#Pearls #Obscurity #Shells

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

#Fall #Firsts #Genius

That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Heart #Poetry #Source

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

#Broken #May #Vases

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

#Contentment #Way #Sometimes

This is the pleasantest part of life. Oblivion throws her light coverlet over our infancy; and, soon after we are out of the cradle we forget how soundly we had been slumbering, and how delightful were our dreams. Toil and pleasure contend for us almost the instant we rise from it: and weariness follows whichever has carried us away. We stop awhile, look around us, wonder to find we have completed the circle of existence, fold our arms, and fall asleep again.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Dream #Fall #Light

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

#Music #Grieving #Sacred

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

#Giving #Diversity #Long

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

#Kissing #Eyelashes #Tears

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

#Greatness #Law #Bird

Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Greatness

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

#Government #Long #Democracy

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

#Eye #Men #Snow

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Friendship #Virtue

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

#Friendship #Broken #May

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

#Friendship #Sun #Righteousness

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

#Air #Fame

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

#Errors #Understanding #Mastery

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

#Lying #Doubt #Inquiry

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

#Ocean #Men #Names

Immoderate power, like other intemperance, leaves the progeny weaker and weaker, until nature as in compassion covers it with her mantle and it is seen no more.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Compassion #Power #Intemperance

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

#Wisdom #Men #Two

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.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Sweet #Men #Self

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#God #Solitude #Audience

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

#Giving #Sincere #Prudence

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

#Conceited #Thinking #Religion

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

#Mind #Unhappy #Praise

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

#Death #Hands #Fire

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Death #Age #Quiet

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

#Politics #Argument #Falsehood

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.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Gratitude #Sweet #Eye

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Stupid #Practice #Religion

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

#Reality #Self #Suffering

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.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Wise #Opinion

The highest price we can pay for anything; is to ask it.
-- Walter Savage Landor

#Money #Pay #Wealth