Walter Scott Quotes

232 Sourced Quotes

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
We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold, But seldom think upon our God, Who tinged these clouds with gold.

Walter Scott
Whose lenient sorrows find relief, whose joys are chastened by their grief.

Walter Scott
Warriors! and where are warriors found, If not on martial Britain's ground? And who, when waked with note of fire, Love more than they the British lyre?

Walter Scott
The deep recess of the wildwood glen, Where roe and red-deer find sheltering den, When the sun is in his power.

Walter Scott
[geologists]...rin uphill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae mony road-makers run daft, to see how the warld was made.

Walter Scott
The time which passes over our heads so imperceptibly makes the same gradual change in habits, manners and character, as in personal appearance. At the revolution of every five years we find ourselves another and yet the same;--there is a change of views, and no less of the light in which we regard them; a change of motives as well as of action.

Walter Scott
The chain of friendship, however bright, does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.

Walter Scott
Loud o'er my head though awful thunders roll, And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, Yet 'tis Thy voice, my God, that bids them fly, Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. Then let the good Thy mighty name revere, And hardened sinners Thy just vengeance fear.

Walter Scott
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
The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.

Walter Scott
There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its "still small voice" amid rural leisure and placid retirement. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during the season of affliction.

Walter Scott
Fortune may raise up or abuse the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her control.

Walter Scott
Crystal and hearts would lose all their merit in the world if it were not for their fragility.

Walter Scott
It is from the great book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of black-letter, or wire-wove, and hot-pressed, that I have venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public.

Walter Scott
Though varying wishes, hopes, and fears,
Fever'd the progress of these years,
Yet now, days, weeks, and months but seem
The recollection of a dream.

Walter Scott
It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.

Walter Scott
I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!

Walter Scott
High minds, of native pride and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse; Fear, for their scourge, means villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave!

Walter Scott
He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.

Walter Scott
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
Besides, Rose Bradwardine, beautiful and amiable as we have described her, had not precisely the sort of beauty or merit which captivates a romantic imagination in early youth. She was too frank, too confiding, too kind; amiable qualities, undoubtedly, but destructive of the marvellous, with which a youth of imagination delights to dress the empress of his affections.

Walter Scott
A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love make the flame blaze the brighter.

Walter Scott
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
A slight touch of the cynic in manner and habits, gives the physician, to the common eye, an air of authority which greatly tends to enlarge his reputation.

Walter Scott
As hope and fear alternate chase
Our course through life's uncertain race.

Walter Scott
What skilful limner e'er would choose To paint the rainbow's varying hues, Unless to mortal it were given To dip his brush in dyes of heaven?

Walter Scott
Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome of which I have read so much.

Walter Scott
What various scenes, and O! what scenes of Woe,
Are witness'd by that red and struggling beam!
The fever'd patient, from his pallet low,
Through crowded hospitals beholds it stream;
The ruined maiden trembles at its gleam,
The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and jail,
The love-lorn wretch starts from tormenting dream;
The wakeful mother, by the glimmering pale,
Trims her sick infant's couch, and soothes his feeble wail.

Walter Scott
Chance will not do the work — Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumbers at the helm, The very wind that wafts us toward the port May dash us on the Shelves — The steersman's part is vigilance, Blow it or rough or smooth.

Walter Scott