Top 236 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Savage Landor - Page 2

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

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.

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.

You should indeed have longer tarried By the roadside before you married.

There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul.

The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman.

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

Wrong is but falsehood put in practice.

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

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.

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

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune.

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.

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.

Piety--warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much.

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

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.

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 are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.

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

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

Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.

When a woman hath ceased to be quite the same to us, it matters little how different she becomes.

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.

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

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

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.

Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.

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.

Contentment is better than divinations or visions.

Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would.

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.

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.

Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear; Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a word of fear.

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?

Not dancing well, I never danced at all--and how grievously has my heart ached when others where in the full enjoyment of that conversation which I had no right even to partake.

Other offences, even the greatest, are the violation of one law: despotism is the violation of all.

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

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

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

Cats like men are flatterers.

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.

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

Children are what the mothers are.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

When a cat flatters ... he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.

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

The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.

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

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's.

We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.

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.

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.

I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.

An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.