Quotes from Walter Savage Landor

We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

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.

The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

As we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way.

Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

Friendships are the purer and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the Sun not only of righteousness but of love.

The heart that once has been bathed in love's pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.

Delay in justice is injustice.

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.

What is reading but silent conversation?

The writings of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Men, like snails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.

A man's vanity tells him what is honour; a man's conscience what is justice.

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.

States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.

Delay of justice is injustice.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

We talk on principle, but we act on interest.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.