Quotes by Walter Savage Landor

“'Tis verse that givesImmortal youth to mortal maids.”

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

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

“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 stepSo active, so inqu...”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 repea...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.”

“Little men in lofty places, who throw long shadows, because our sun is setting.”

“Upon the work of Walter LandorI am unfit to speak with candor.If you can read it, well and good;But as for me, I never could.”

“We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yokeAs Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.”