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.
Fleas know not whether they are upon the body of a giant or upon one of ordinary size.
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.
A great man knows the value of greatness; he dares not hazard it, he will not squander it.
Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.
Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.
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.
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.
There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.
Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.
If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.
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.
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.
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 very beautiful rarely love at all; those precious images are placed above the reach of the passions: Time alone is permitted to efface them.
Piety--warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much.
Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.
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.
That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.
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.
Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.
I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness, those that fit the thing.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.
A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.
I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.
We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.
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.
Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.
