Walter Savage Landor Quotes - Page 9

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

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.

The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.

It often comes into my head That we may dream when we are dead, But I am far from sure we do. O that it were so! then my rest Would be indeed among the blest; I should for ever dream of you.

Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds, and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life.

As we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way.

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another.

Tyrants never perish from tyranny, but always from folly,-when their fantasies have built up a palace for which the earth has no foundation.

It has been my fortune to love in general those men most who have thought most differently from me, on subjects wherein others pardon no discordance. I think I have no more right to be angry with a man, whose reason has followed up a process different from what mine has, and is satisfied with the result, than with one who has gone to Venice while I am at Siena, and who writes to me that he likes the place.

We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.

The heart that once has been bathed in love's pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.

Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.

The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.

The religion of Christ is peace and good-will,--the religion of Christendom is war and ill-will.

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

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.

Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth.

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.

A little praise is good for a shy temper; it teaches it to rely on the kindness of others.

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.

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.