Top 100 Walter Scott Quotes
#1. The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Walter Scott
#2. Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must.
Jane Austen
#3. How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart, and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, those only can understand who have read both the old chronicles and the modern romances. It was one of the congenial labors of
William Cleaver Wilkinson
#4. My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.
Terry Brooks
#5. After watching the video, the senseless shooting and taking of Walter Scott's life was absolutely unnecessary and avoidable. My heart aches for the family and our North Charleston community. I will be watching this case closely.
Tim Scott
#6. Having been bred amongst mountains I am always unhappy when in a flat country. Whenever the skirts of the horizon come on a level with myself I feel myself quite uneasy and generally have a headache.
(Letter to Sir Walter Scott, 25 July 1802)
James Hogg
#7. With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his ... It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.
George Bernard Shaw
#8. Sir Walter Scott created rank & caste in the South and also reverence for and pride and pleasure in them. Life on the Mississippi
Don Quixote swept admiration for medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence. Ivanhoe restored it. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
#9. You and I are from two different worlds."
"Nonsense. We have much in common. We both like books, dogs, poems, Sir Walter Scott, dogs - I could go on."
"You listed dogs twice."
"It does not matter; I still made my point."
"No, you haven't.
Karen Hawkins
#10. Send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years .
Lord Byron
#11. But I would have vengeance to fall on the head, not on the hand; on the tyrannical and oppressive government which designed and directed these premeditated and reiterated insults, not on the tools of office which they employed in the execution of the injuries they designed you.
Walter Scott
#12. Heaven know its time; the bullet has its billet
Walter Scott
#13. One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name
Walter Scott
#14. I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake.
Walter Scott
#15. The seat of the Celtic Muse is in the mist of the secret and solitary hill, and her voice in the murmur of the mountain stream.
Walter Scott
#16. It is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency fifty percent.
Walter Dill Scott
#17. You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.
Walter Scott
#18. How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
Walter Scott
#19. The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.
Walter Scott
#20. I will not slip my dog before the game's a-foot. - But,
Walter Scott
#21. Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates.
Walter Scott
#22. Here eglantine embalm'd the air, Hawthorne and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Group'd their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain.
Walter Scott
#23. Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.
Walter Scott
#24. To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
Walter Scott
#25. The gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound.
Walter Scott
#26. Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.
Walter Scott
#27. Some feelings are to mortals given With less of earth in them than heaven.
Walter Scott
#28. Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?
Walter Scott
#29. O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!
Walter Scott
#30. He turn'd his charger as he spake, Upon the river shore, He gave his bridle reins a shake, Said, "Adieu for evermore, my love, And adieu for evermore."
Walter Scott
#31. Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
Walter Scott
#32. Adversity is like the period of the rain ... cold, comfortless, unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date, the rose and the pomegranate.
Walter Scott
#33. What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.
Walter Scott
#35. Meat eaten without either mirth or music is ill of digestion.
Walter Scott
#36. And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
Walter Scott
#37. When Israel, of the Lord belov'd, Out of the land of bondage came, Her fathers' God before her mov'd, An awful guide in smoke and flame.
Walter Scott
#38. simplicity may be improved, but pride and conceit never. Well,
Walter Scott
#39. That day of wrath, that dreadful day. When heaven and earth shall pass away.
Walter Scott
#40. When true friends meet in adverse hour; 'Tis like a sunbeam through a shower. A watery way an instant seen, The darkly closing clouds between.
Walter Scott
#41. All is possible for those who dare to die!
Walter Scott
#42. Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.
Walter Scott
#43. As he offered to advance, she exclaimed, Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance!
one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the precipice; my body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity upon the stones of that courtyard ere it become the victim of thy brutality!
Walter Scott
#44. In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.
Walter Scott
#45. Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
Walter Scott
#46. My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,
My gentle guide, in following thee.
Walter Scott
#47. In civilised society law is the chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house,
Walter Scott
#48. Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee. I prithee, dear moon, now show to me the form and the features, the speech and degree, of the man that true lover of mine shall be.
Walter Scott
#49. The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small consequence, but in enlarging, improving and correcting the information you possess by the authority of others.
Walter Scott
#50. Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.
Walter Scott
#51. See yonder rock from which the fountain gushes; is it less compact of adamant, though waters flow from it? Firm hearts have moister eyes.
Walter Scott
#52. As hope and fear alternate chase
Our course through life's uncertain race.
Walter Scott
#54. Nothing could be more gracefully majestic than his step and manner, had they not been marked by a predominant air of haughtiness, easily acquired by the exercise of unresisted authority.
Walter Scott
#55. Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland?
Walter Scott
#56. Oh, what a tangled web we weave ... when first we practice to deceive.
Walter Scott
#57. Who, noteless as the race from which he sprung,
Saved others' names, but left his own unsung.
Walter Scott
#58. By profession an observer of tones and gestures,
Walter Scott
#59. He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Walter Scott
#60. And ne er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a naiad or a grace Of finer form or lovelier face ...
Walter Scott
#61. Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.
Walter Scott
#62. It is more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.
Walter Scott
#63. The lovers of the chase say that the hare feels more agony during the pursuit of the greyhounds, than when she is struggling in their fangs.
Walter Scott
#64. The summer dawn's reflected hue To purple changed Lock Katrine blue, Mildly and soft the western breeze Just kiss'd the lake, just stirr'd the trees, And the pleased lake, like maiden coy, Trembled but dimpled not for joy.
Walter Scott
#65. For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.
Walter Scott
#66. there are stratagems in law as well as war.
Walter Scott
#67. Lawyer's anxiety about the fate of the most interesting cause has seldom spoiled either his sleep or digestion.
Walter Scott
#68. Scott calls Bois-Guilbert "an unprincipled voluptuary," which is hard to improve on.
Richard Armour
#69. As system virtualization becomes mainstream, IT managers will find a greater need for disk imaging for disaster recovery and systems deployment,.
Walter Scott
#70. Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and powerful soul!
Walter Scott
#71. Necessity
thou best of peacemakers, As well as surest prompter of invention.
Walter Scott
#72. O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?
Walter Scott
#73. The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?
Walter Scott
#74. Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.
Walter Scott
#75. Fools should not have chapping sticks'; that is, weapons of offence.
Walter Scott
#76. It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.
Walter Scott
#77. In the lost battle, Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle With groans of the dying.
Walter Scott
#78. Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it.
Walter Scott
#79. She felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.
Walter Scott
#80. How nearly can what we most despise and hate, approach in outward manner to that which we most venerate!
Walter Scott
#81. Heap on more wood! - the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Walter Scott
#82. If you keep a thing seven years, you are sure to find a use for it.
Walter Scott
#84. But there stands the sword of my ancestor Sir Richard Vernon, slain at Shrewsbury, and sorely slandered by a sad fellow called Will Shakspeare, whose Lancastrian partialities, and a certain knack at embodying them, has turned history upside down, or rather inside out.
Walter Scott
#85. I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right, but when I am a little in the wrong.
Walter Scott
#87. We resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.
Walter Scott
#88. I did not myself set a high estimation on wealth, and had the affectation of most young men of lively imagination, who suppose that they can better dispense with the possession of money, than resign their time and faculties to the labour necessary to acquire it.
Walter Scott
#89. He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.
Walter Scott
#90. There are few more melancholy sensations than those with which we regard scenes of past pleasure when altered and deserted.
Walter Scott
#91. Affection can withstand very severe storms of vigor, but not a long polar frost of indifference.
Walter Scott
#92. Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome. And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd.
Walter Scott
#93. If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.
Walter Scott
#94. Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.
Walter Scott
#95. Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.
Walter Scott
#96. It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.
Walter Scott
#97. Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening.
Walter Scott
#98. When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
Walter Scott
#99. Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.
Walter Scott
#100. Upon subjects which interested him, and when quite at ease, he possessed that flow of natural, and somewhat florid eloquence, which has been supposed as powerful as figure, fashion, fame, or fortune, in winning the female heart. There
Walter Scott
