“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.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
“Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.”
Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
“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.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“Falsehood is for a season.”
Source: Barrow and Newton. Peleus and Thetis. The King of Ava and Rao-Gong-Fao. Photo Zavellas and his sister Kaido. Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. The Empress Catharine and Princess Dashkoff. William Penn and Lord Peterborough. Miguel and mother. Metellus and Marius. Nicolas and Michel. Leofric and Godiva. Izaac Walton, Cotton, and William Oldways
“The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.”
Source: The Last Fruit Off an Old Tree
“Be assured that, although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice or a deficiency of what, in physics, is called excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, with patriotism, or with virtue.”
Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
“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.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations: Dialogues of literary men. Dialogues of famous women. Miscellaneous dialogues
“Justice is often pale and melancholy; but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits and the bloom of loveliness.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
“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.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“Harmonious words render ordinary ideas acceptable; less ordinary, pleasant; novel and ingenious ones, delightful. As pictures and statues, and living beauty, too, show better by music-light, so is poetry irradiated, vivified, glorified', and raised into immortal life by harmony.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.”
Source: Indexes. Table of first lines. Imaginary conversations
“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.”
Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
“There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: The Last Fruit Off an Old Tree
“Moroseness is the evening of turbulence.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen: Richard I and the Abbot of Boxley. The Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. King Henry IV and Sir Arnold Savage. Southey and Porson. Oliver Cromwel and Walter Noble. Aeschines and Phocion. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil. King James I and Isaac Casaubon. Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. General Kleber and some French officers. Bonaparte and the president of the senate. Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle. Peter Leopold and the President Du
“Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
“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.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“A little praise is good for a shy temper; it teaches it to rely on the kindness of others.”
“There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“The religion of Christ is peace and good-will,--the religion of Christendom is war and ill-will.”
Source: Works: Indexes. Table of first lines. Imaginary conversations
“He who brings ridicule to bear against truth finds in his hand a blade without a hilt.”
Source: Delphi Collected Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (Illustrated)
“Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
“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.”
Source: Delphi Collected Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor: Imaginary conversations. Third series : Conversations of literary men (First series)
“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.”
Source: Barrow and Newton. Peleus and Thetis. The King of Ava and Rao-Gong-Fao. Photo Zavellas and his sister Kaido. Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa. The Empress Catharine and Princess Dashkoff. William Penn and Lord Peterborough. Miguel and mother. Metellus and Marius. Nicolas and Michel. Leofric and Godiva. Izaac Walton, Cotton, and William Oldways
“Circumstances form the character; but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form.”
“Contentment is better than divinations or visions.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
“The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: Indexes. Table of first lines. Imaginary conversations
“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.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“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.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“Virtue is presupposed in friendship.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“Little men build up great ones, but the snow colossus soon melts; the good stand under the eye of God, and therefore stand.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.”
Source: Literary Hours
“Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“It appears to be among the laws of nature, that the mighty of intellect should be pursued and carped by the little, as the solitary flight of one great bird is followed by the twittering petulance of many smaller.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“The tomb is the pedestal of greatness. I make a distinction between God's great and the king's great.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
“It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved--is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
“O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
