Walter Savage Landor Quotes
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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.
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Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess.
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There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it.
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Consult duty not events.
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There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.
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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.
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We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
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The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
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Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
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We talk on principal, but act on motivation.
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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.
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We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.
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Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
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Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
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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.
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There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.
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Ah what avails the sceptered race,Ah what the form divine!
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No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!
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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 inquiring eye, or tongueSo varied in discourse.
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But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue...Shake one, and it awakens; then applyIts polished lips to your attentive ear,And it remembers its august abodes,And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.