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Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before there is any elevation.
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
Spring
Twigs
Usually
Ascent
Highest
Pebbles
Quite
Elevation
Often
Risen
Merit
Twig
Rarely
Baseness
Sufficient
Pebble
More quotes by Walter Savage Landor
Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.
Walter Savage Landor
We fancy that our afflictions are sent us directly from above sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent.
Walter Savage Landor
There is only one word of tenderness we could say, which we have not said oftentimes before and there is no consolation in it. The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.
Walter Savage Landor
An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.
Walter Savage Landor
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.
Walter Savage Landor
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery.
Walter Savage Landor
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
Walter Savage Landor
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
The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.
Walter Savage Landor
We care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster, and make as much noise and bustle as we can but if the kindest and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and covert.
Walter Savage Landor
I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.
Walter Savage Landor
Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.
Walter Savage Landor
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
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
Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are the turbid look the most profound.
Walter Savage Landor
Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.
Walter Savage Landor
No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
Walter Savage Landor
Truth is a point, the subtlest and finest harder than adamant never to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life blood, of those who press earnestly upon it.
Walter Savage Landor
Men universally are ungrateful towards him who instructs them, unless, in the hours or in the intervals of instruction, he presents a sweet-cake to their self-love.
Walter Savage Landor
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
Walter Savage Landor
