Walter Savage Landor Quotes
January 30 1775 – September 17, 1864
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Absence and death are the same only that in death there is no suffering.
Walter Savage Landor— Letter to Robert Browning. Walter Savage Landor: Last Days, Letters and Conversations (1934), ed. Harry Christopher Minchin, p. 48.
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— Walter Savage Landor, Letter to John Forster, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Ah, what avails the sceptred race! Ah, what the form divine!
Walter Savage Landor— 1806 'Rose Aylmer'.
Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.
Walter Savage Landor— 1824 Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, 'Southey and Porson'.
Fleas know not whether they are upon the body of a giant or upon one of ordinary size.
Walter Savage Landor— 1824 Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, 'Southey and Porson'.
Past ruined Ilion Helen lives, Alcestis rises from the shades; Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives Immortal youth to mortal maids.
Walter Savage Landor— 1831 'To Ianthe'.
There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave.
Walter Savage Landor— 1846 Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, 'Aesop and Rhodope'.
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— 1853 'Death stands above me'.
I strove with none; for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art.
Walter Savage Landor— 1853 'Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher'.
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.
Walter Savage Landor— 1853 Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans, 'Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor'.
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.
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.
Ah what avails the sceptered race,Ah what the form divine!
Walter Savage Landor— Rose Aylmer (1806).
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyesMay weep, but never see,A night of memories and of sighsI consecrate to thee.
Walter Savage Landor— Rose Aylmer (1806).
'Tis verse that givesImmortal 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 stepSo active, so inquiring eye, or tongueSo 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.
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
Walter Savage Landor— To Robert Browning (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.
Around the child bend all the threeSweet Graces: Faith, Hope, Charity.Around the man bend other faces;Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces.
Walter Savage Landor— Dry Sticks, Different Graces (1858).
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.
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.
Wearers of rings and chains!Pray do not take the painsTo set me right.In vain my faults ye quote;I write as others wroteOn Sunium’s hight.
Walter Savage Landor— The last Fruit of an old Tree, Epigram cvi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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.
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— "Aesop and Rhodopè", I
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— "Cromwell and Noble".
Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.
Walter Savage Landor— "Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney".
Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.
Walter Savage Landor— Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829), "Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney".
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun’s palace-porch, where when unyoked chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
Walter Savage Landor— Walter Savage Landor, Gebir (1798), Book i.
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.
Walter Savage Landor— Walter Savage Landor, Gebir, Book V, line 145.
We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.
Walter Savage Landor
