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Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

Walter Savage Landor

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Walter Savage Landor
Age: 89 †
Born: 1775
Born: January 30
Died: 1864
Died: September 17
Poet
Writer
Warwick
Warwickshire
History
Surface
Biographies
True
Deep
Studies
Truth
Events
Delightful
Ever
Study
Historian
Great
Lying
Seeds
Delve
Interest
Near
Biography
Read
Useful
Historians
Lives
Appearance
Utility

More quotes by Walter Savage Landor

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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.
Walter Savage Landor
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Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are the turbid look the most profound.
Walter Savage Landor
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Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.
Walter Savage Landor
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In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing.
Walter Savage Landor
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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
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Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
Walter Savage Landor
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No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
Walter Savage Landor
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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
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The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence.
Walter Savage Landor
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O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.
Walter Savage Landor
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Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.
Walter Savage Landor
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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.
Walter Savage Landor
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In the morn of life we are alert, we are heated in its noon, and only in its decline do we repose.
Walter Savage Landor
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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
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The deafest man can hear praise, and is slow to think any an excess.
Walter Savage Landor
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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
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Ah what avails the sceptred race, Ah what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.
Walter Savage Landor
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Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor
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Every witticism is an inexact thought that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.
Walter Savage Landor
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I strove with none for none was worth my strife.
Walter Savage Landor