Walter Savage Landor Quotes - Page 4

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.

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.

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.

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

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

There is no eloquence which does not agitate the soul.

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

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

No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.

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

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.

Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike of others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.

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.

Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.

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.

Cats like men are flatterers.

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.

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?

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.

We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.

Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.

I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.

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

Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.