English writer and poet (1775-1864)
Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry: on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose ; and neither fan nor burned feather can bring her to herself again.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
I am grieved at your sorrow, although it will hereafter be a source of joy unto you. The purest water runs from the hardest rock.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
Not dancing well, I never danced at all--and how grievously has my heart ached when others where in the full enjoyment of that conversation which I had no right even to partake.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
The Letters of Walter Savage Landor to Marguerite, Countess of Blessington
As we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite. One kind of it suits one man, another kind another. The elevated mind takes in and breathes out again that which would be uncongenial to the baser; and the baser draws life and enjoyment from that which would be putridity to the loftier.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
The very beautiful rarely love at all; those precious images are placed above the reach of the passions: Time alone is permitted to efface them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat convey'd,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old, and she a shade.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"On Dirce"
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.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
The Book of Friendship
Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
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
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Death Stands above Me, Whispering Low
To my ninth decade I have totter'd on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"On His Eightieth Birthday"
There is only one word of tenderness we could say, which we have not said oftentimes before ; and there is no consolation in it. The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
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.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"To Ianthe"
How delightful it is to see a friend after a length of absence! How delightful to chide him for that length of absence to which we owe such delight.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
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?
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Gebir
Toleration is in itself the essence of Christianity, and the very point which the founder of it most peculiarly enjoined.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Dialogues of Sovereigns and Statesmen
Cats ask plainly for what they want.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
Piety--warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
We talk on principle, but we act on interest.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen