264 Quotes by Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

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.

In the hours of distress and misery, the eyes of every mortal turn to friendship; in the hours of gladness and conviviality, what is our want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude, or with any other sweet or sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A friend.

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.

An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.

Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well-regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content.

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.

Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty.

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