Quotes About Landor

Petulance is not wit, although a few grains of wit may be found in petulance; quartz is not gold, although a few grains of gold may be found in quartz.

There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.

And I may dine at journey's endWith Landor and with Donne.

Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93

No! I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man. There is a reserve even in his countenance, which does not lighten as Landor's does, whom I saw the same evening. His eyes have more meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation there is rather the solemnity and calmness of truth itself, than the animation and energy of those who seek for it.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.

Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.