Walter Savage Landor

Poet and prose writer, 1775-1864

Cited as Landor. — 81 quotations

Absence

To conquer that abstraction which is called absence.

Age

I am aging; that is, I have a whitish, or rather a light-colored, hair here and there.

Agiotage

Vanity and agiotage are to a Parisian the oxygen and hydrogen of life.

Agnate

Assume more or less of a fictitious character, but congenial and agnate with the former.

Anarchal

We are in the habit of calling those bodies of men anarchal which are in a state of effervescence.

Animation

Perhaps an inanimate thing supplies me, while I am speaking, with whatever I possess of animation.

Arbitrary

Rank pretends to fix the value of every one, and is the most arbitrary of all things.

Article

They would fight not for articles of faith, but for articles of food.

Askance

My palfrey eyed them askance.

Aulic

Ecclesiastical wealth and aulic dignities.

Built

Like the generality of Genoese countrywomen, strongly built.

Certainty

Certainties are uninteresting and sating.

Chouse

The undertaker of the afore-cited poesy hath choused your highness.

Composite

Happiness, like air and water . . . is composite.

Creation

An Irish peer of recent creation.

Cub

I would rather have such . . . .in cub or kennel than in my closet or at my table.

Device

I must have instruments of my own device.

Diaphanous

Another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and diaphanous.

Drawl

Theologians and moralists . . . talk mostly in a drawling and dreaming way about it.

Essence

The laws are at present, both in form and essence, the greatest curse that society labors under.

Evangile

Above all, the Servians . . . read, with much avidity, the evangile of their freedom.

Extraneous

Nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment.

Forefend

God forefend it should ever be recorded in our history.

Frame

We may in some measure frame our minds for the reception of happiness.

Fresh

A fresh pleasure in every fresh posture of the limbs.

Generality

Let us descend from generalities to particulars.

Guttural

In such a sweet, guttural accent.

Habitude

The verdict of the judges was biased by nothing else than their habitudes of thinking.

Harbinger

I knew by these harbingers who were coming.

Hazard

They hazard to cut their feet.

Hypallage

The hypallage, of which Virgil is fonder than any other writer, is much the gravest fault in language.

Idiom

Every good writer has much idiom.

Inanition

Feeble from inanition, inert from weariness.

Insuetude

Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

Insult

An unwillingness to insult over their helpless fatuity.

Left-handed

The commendations of this people are not always left-handed and detractive.

Light

His bishops lead him forth, and light him on.

Literate

The literate now chose their emperor, as the military chose theirs.

Machine

The whole machine of government ought not to bear upon the people with a weight so heavy and oppressive.

Modus

They, from time immemorial, had paid a modus, or composition.

Mote

We are motes in the midst of generations.

Mother

I behold . . . the solitary majesty of Crete, mother of a religion, it is said, that lived two thousand years.

Objurgation

With a strong objurgation of the elbow in his ribs.

Obligate

That they may not incline or be obligated to any vile or lowly occupations.

Opposite

The virtuous man meets with more opposites and opponents than any other.

Penury

It arises in neither from penury of thought.

Practice

In church they are taught to love God; after church they are practiced to love their neighbor.

Prone

Poets are nearly all prone to melancholy.

Protest

He protest that his measures are pacific.

Quite

He really looks quite concerned.

Reclamation

I would now, on the reclamation both of generosity and of justice, try clemency.

Retrospect

We may introduce a song without retrospect to the old comedy.

Scientific

Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences.

Second

May the day when we become the second people upon earth . . . be the day of our utter extirpation.

Seed

Many interests have grown up, and seeded, and twisted their roots in the crevices of many wrongs.

Sermonize

Which of us shall sing or sermonize the other fast asleep?

Short

Hardly anything short of an invasion could rouse them again to war.

Side

We have not always been of the . . . same side in politics.

Signification

A signification of being pleased.

Snift

It now appears that they were still snifing and hankering after their old quarters.

Speck

Many bright specks bubble up along the blue Egean.

Stilt

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.

Stop

If his sentences were properly stopped.

Strain

Whether any poet of our country since Shakespeare has exerted a greater variety of powers with less strain and less ostentation.

Strike

How often has stricken you dumb with his irony!

Suckle

They are not weak, suckled by Wisdom.

Supplant

You never will supplant the received ideas of God.

Swell

The swell and subsidence of his periods.

Tiff

She tiffed with Tim, she ran from Ralph.

Together

Soldiers can never stand idle long together.

Trash

A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin.

Tutelar

This, of all advantages, is the greatest . . . the most tutelary of morals.

Undersong

In the very [poetry] there often an undersong of sense which none beside the poetic mind . . . can comprehend.

Upon

Philip swore upon the Evangelists to abstain from aggression in my absence.

Vestige

Ridicule has followed the vestiges of Truth, but never usurped her place.

Virgin

A few ounces of mutton, with a little virgin oil.

Watch

I must cool a little, and watch my opportunity.

Welter

The priests at the altar . . . weltering in their blood.

Wilding

The fruit of the tree . . . is small, of little juice, and bad quality. I presume it to be a wilding.

Wry

Not according to the wry rigor of our neighbors, who never take up an old idea without some extravagance in its application.