Top 236 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Savage Landor

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English poet Walter Savage Landor.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.

No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.
Consult duty not events.
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. — © Walter Savage Landor
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.
We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
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.
Delay in justice is injustice.
There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.
Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.
We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
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.
The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour. — © Walter Savage Landor
The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.
We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.
Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.
Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.
No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.
There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it.
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 flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.
Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another.
Great men always pay deference to greater.
The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.
Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.
We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.
Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.
Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.
Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.
We talk on principal, but act on motivation.
I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.
Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.
What is reading but silent conversation?
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.
We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love. — © Walter Savage Landor
We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
The highest price we can pay for anything; is to ask it.
Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
Little men build up great ones, but the snow colossus soon melts; the good stand under the eye of God, and therefore stand.
There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.
Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.
Sculpture and painting are moments of life; poetry is life itself.
Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.
Hope is the mother of faith.
Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable. — © Walter Savage Landor
Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.
Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.
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.
There is only one word of tenderness we could say, which we have not said oftentimes before ; and there is no consolation in it. The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.
Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.
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.
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.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm'd both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.
Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
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.
If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.
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