Walter Savage Landor

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it.

— Walter Savage Landor

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.

— Walter Savage Landor

A great man knows the value of greatness; he dares not hazard it, he will not squander it.

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

Belief in the future life is the appetite of reason.

— Walter Savage Landor

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune.

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The…

— Walter Savage Landor

There is only one word of tenderness we could say, which we have not said oftentimes before ; and there is no…

— Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands…

— Walter Savage Landor

Immoderate power, like other intemperance, leaves the progeny weaker and weaker, until nature as in compassion covers it with her mantle and…

— Walter Savage Landor

Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy…

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading…

— Walter Savage Landor

Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty.

— Walter Savage Landor

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

— Walter Savage Landor

The assailant is often in the right; the assailed is always.

— Walter Savage Landor

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.

— Walter Savage Landor

Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne.

— Walter Savage Landor

Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth.

— Walter Savage Landor

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

The vain poet is of the opinion that nothing of his can be too much: he sends to you basketful after basketful…

— Walter Savage Landor

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every…

— Walter Savage Landor

The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.

— Walter Savage Landor

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate…

— Walter Savage Landor

There is a gravity which is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy nor dwells in contraction of heart: but…

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to…

— Walter Savage Landor

We fancy that our afflictions are sent us directly from above; sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in…

— Walter Savage Landor

There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her…

— Walter Savage Landor

Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape…

— 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…

— Walter Savage Landor

Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to…

— Walter Savage Landor

Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.

— Walter Savage Landor

Men universally are ungrateful towards him who instructs them, unless, in the hours or in the intervals of instruction, he presents a…

— 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…

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor