Walter Scott Quotes - Page 8

Still are the thoughts to memory dear.

Thou hast had thty day, old dame, but thy sun has long been set. Thou art now the very emblem of an old warhorse turned out on the barren heath; thou hast had thy paces in thy time, but now a broken amble is the best of them.

Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.

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.

When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.

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.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.

Some touch of Nature's genial glow.

Where lives the man that has not tried How mirth can into folly glide, And folly into sin!

Mellow nuts have the hardest rind.

Sensibility is nature's celestial spring.

We do that in our zeal our calmer moment would be afraid to answer.

Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.

But search the land of living men, Where wilt thou find their like again?

It is a great disgrace to religion, to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces.

Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.

Vengeance to God alone belongs; But, when I think of all my wrongs My blood is liquid flame!

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.

The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

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?

Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, Dream of battled fields no more. Days of danger, nights of waking.

Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!

He hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share of man's falsehood.

The heart-sick faintness of the hope delayed!

Contentions fierce, Ardent, and dire, spring from no petty cause.