Top 236 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Savage Landor - Page 4

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.

We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone.

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

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.

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.

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

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

Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth.

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

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.

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

I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.

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.

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.

Cruelty in all countries is the companion of anger; but there is only one, and never was another on the globe, where she coquets both with anger and mirth.

How sweet and sacred idleness is!

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

Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.

We fancy that our afflictions are sent us directly from above; sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent.

Vast objects of remote altitude must be looked at a long while before they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope tubes that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare; and generations of men serve but a single witness to his claims.

Kings play at war unfairly with republics; they can only lose some earth, and some creatures they value as little, while republics lose in every soldier a part of themselves.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art.

Moroseness is the evening of turbulence.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before there is any elevation.

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

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

Virtue is presupposed in friendship.

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.

We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.

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.

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.

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.

States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

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.

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.

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

Circumstances form the character; but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form.

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

The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.

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

Falsehood is for a season.

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

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

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