Walter Savage Landor Quotes

Children are what the mothers are.

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

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

The eyes of critics, whether in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's.

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on, And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; She, who once led me where she would, is gone, So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

How delightful it is to see a friend after a length of absence! How delightful to chide him for that length of absence to which we owe such delight.

Dignity, in private men and in governments, has been little else than a stately and stiff perseverance in oppression; and spirit, as it is called, little else than the foam of hard-mouthed insolence.

The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.

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

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

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.

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.

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.

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

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.

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

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

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

Wrong is but falsehood put in practice.

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

Falsehood is for a season.

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.

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.

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

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

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.

Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.

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.

There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul.