Walter Savage Landor Quotes (23 quotes)

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Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor: 23 quotes2 likes

Famous Walter Savage Landor Quotes

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Barrow and Newton".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè! 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.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Aesop and Rhodopè", I.
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“What is reading but silent conversation.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

Source: Imaginary Conversations

“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”

Walter Savage Landor

Source: Pericles and Aspasia

“The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.”

Walter Savage Landor

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 8.

“There is delight in singing, though none hear
Beside the singer.”

Walter Savage Landor

To Robert Browning (1846).

Walter Savage Landor Quotes

“When a cat flatters… he is not insincere: you may safely take it for real kindness.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

Source: Imaginary Conversations

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor

Gebir, Book I (1798). Compare: "Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed/ Mysterious union with his native sea", William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book iv. Wordsworth's prompted Landor to comment, "Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital", Walter Savage Landor, Letter to John Forster.

“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
with Dirce in the boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,
That he is old and she a shade.”

Walter Savage Landor

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

“Tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.”

Walter Savage Landor

Verse.

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor

To Robert Browning (1846). Compare: "Nor sequent centuries could hit/ Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit", Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day and Other Pieces, Solution.

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

Walter Savage Landor

Dry Sticks, Different Graces (1858).

“I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.”

Walter Savage Landor

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33.

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Cromwell and Noble".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Chesterfield and Chatham".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

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

Walter Savage Landor Rose Aylmer

Rose Aylmer (1806).

“Ah what avails the sceptered race,
Ah what the form divine!”

Walter Savage Landor Rose Aylmer

Rose Aylmer (1806).

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

Walter Savage Landor

Plays, st. 2 (1846).

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor

I Strove with None (1853). The work is identified in Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919) as Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.
Quoted in W. Somerset Maugham: The Razor's Edge, The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia, 1944, p. 161.

“Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

Walter Savage Landor

To Robert Browning (1846).

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor

The last Fruit of an old Tree, Epigram cvi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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.”

Walter Savage Landor

Gebir, Book I (1798). It is reported that "these lines were specially singled out for admiration by Shelley, Humphrey Davy, Scott, and many remarkable men"; Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), citing Forster, Life of Landor, vol. i. p. 95.