Walter Scott Quotes - Page 3

In love quarrels the party that loves the most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.

Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours---ambition is the serious business of life.

What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the real state of people's minds.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

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.

Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening.

He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.

God in his goodness sent the grapes To cheer both great and small; Little fools will drink too much And great fools none at all!

We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.

Credit is like a looking-glass, which when once sullied by a breath, may be wiped clear again; but if once cracked can never be repaired.

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

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.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.

Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than a habit of drinking.

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 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, unhonor'd, and unsung.

Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger; but in being prompt to confront and disarm it.

Certainly," quoth Athelstane, "women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted.

Treason seldom dwells with courage.

The rose is fairest when 't is budding new, And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears. The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew, And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.

A sinful heart makes feeble hand.

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

Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.

Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden.

I was born a Scotsman and a bare one. Therefore I was born to fight my way in the world.