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
hero ambition pestilence
Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.
music grieving sacred
O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.
shells pearls obscurity
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.
death firsts presses
The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.
faults genius levels
A critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in consequence of this detection, be presumes to place himself on a level with genius.
vision contentment
Contentment is better than divinations or visions.
character matter form
Circumstances form the character; but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form.
beauty order grace
Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal is sought the most ardently, and loved the longest.
disappointment ambition wheels
We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.
appreciation men would-be
Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the bier.
rocks world ascending
The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.
book criticism next
He who first praises a book becomingly is next in merit to the author.
flower cities soul
The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.
envy morality speak
Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.