Top 200 Walter Savage Landor Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Music is God’s gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”

— Walter Savage Landor

2. “I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm’d both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”

— Walter Savage Landor

3. “Delay in justice is injustice.”

— Walter Savage Landor

4. “We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.”

— Walter Savage Landor

5. “Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art.”

— Walter Savage Landor

6. “There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.”

— Walter Savage Landor

7. “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

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

— Walter Savage Landor

9. “Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.”

— Walter Savage Landor

10. “A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.”

— Walter Savage Landor

11. “Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.”

— Walter Savage Landor

12. “Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.”

— Walter Savage Landor

13. “My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.”

— Walter Savage Landor

14. “It often comes into my head That we may dream when we are dead, But I am far from sure we do. O that it were so! then my rest Would be indeed among the blest; I should for ever dream of you.”

— Walter Savage Landor

15. “It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.”

— Walter Savage Landor

16. “There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from us.”

— Walter Savage Landor

17. “I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.”

— Walter Savage Landor

18. “Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne.”

— Walter Savage Landor

19. “Hope is the mother of faith.”

— Walter Savage Landor

20. “To my ninth decade I have totter’d on, And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; She, who once led me where she would, is gone, So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.”

— Walter Savage Landor

21. “Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.”

— Walter Savage Landor

22. “A man’s vanity tells him what is honor, a man’s conscience what is justice.”

— Walter Savage Landor

23. “The assailant is often in the right; the assailed is always.”

— Walter Savage Landor

24. “The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.”

— Walter Savage Landor

25. “He who brings ridicule to bear against truth finds in his hand a blade without a hilt.”

— Walter Savage Landor

26. “We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.”

— Walter Savage Landor

28. “Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.”

— Walter Savage Landor

29. “Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.”

— Walter Savage Landor

30. “Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.”

— Walter Savage Landor

31. “There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.”

— Walter Savage Landor

32. “Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”

— Walter Savage Landor

33. “We talk on principal, but act on motivation.”

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

35. “No truer word, save God’s, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.”

— Walter Savage Landor

36. “The sublime is contained in a grain of dust.”

— Walter Savage Landor

37. “Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.”

— Walter Savage Landor

38. “A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger’s end.”

— Walter Savage Landor

39. “Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of folly, if folly and imprudence are the same.”

— Walter Savage Landor

40. “The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

— Walter Savage Landor

41. “A wise man will always be a Christian, because the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches.”

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Walter Savage Landor

43. “Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance.”

— Walter Savage Landor

44. “Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds, and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life.”

— Walter Savage Landor

45. “Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after.”

— Walter Savage Landor

46. “Moroseness is the evening of turbulence.”

— Walter Savage Landor

47. “The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.”

— Walter Savage Landor

48. “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.”

— Walter Savage Landor

49. “Every witticism is an inexact thought; that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.”

— Walter Savage Landor

50. “The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.”

— Walter Savage Landor