Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landorwas an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 January 1775
dancing together misery
I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.
beautiful passion alone-time
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.
admiration feels discharge
Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike of others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.
proportion absurdity customs
Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.
men growth decay
States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay.
flower men smell
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.
pace may steps
Friendship may sometimes step a few paces in advance of truth.
acceptance fate yield
We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.
ocean august shells
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.
fall autumn years
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.
children pride men
Around the child bend all the threeSweet Graces: Faith, Hope, Charity.Around the man bend other faces;Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces.
play long theatre
When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!
body fleas size
Fleas know not whether they are upon the body of a giant or upon one of ordinary size.
friends delight absence
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.