Walter Savage Landor Quotes

Walter Savage Landor offers lyrical, grand musings that whisk you into vivid, echoing scenes of nature and art.

29 quotes

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue... Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

#1
Past are three summers since she first beheld The ocean; all around the child await Some exclamation of amazement here. She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased, Is this the mighty ocean? is this all? That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,- Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold, Soul discontented with capacity,- Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say She was enchanted by the wicked spells Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed The western winds have landed on our coast? I since have watcht her in lone retreat, Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.

#2
Ah what avails the sceptered race, Ah what the form divine!

#3
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.

#4
'Tis verse that gives Immortal youth to mortal maids.

#5
When we play the fool, how wide The theatre expands! beside, How long the audience sits before us! How many prompters! what a chorus!

#6
There is delight in singing, though none hear Beside the singer.

#7
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walked along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse.

#8
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

#9
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art. I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

#10
Around the child bend all the three Sweet Graces: Faith, Hope, Charity. Around the man bend other faces; Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces.

#11
Wearers of rings and chains! Pray do not take the pains To set me right. In vain my faults ye quote; I write as others wrote On Sunium's hight.

#12
There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.

#13
Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one.

#14
We must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.

#15
Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the dust or into the furnace.

#16
Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth.
A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.
No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.
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.
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.
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.
I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.
The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.
There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul.
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.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.