Izaak Walton Quotes

Of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.

I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.

This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.

Thus use your frog...Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;...and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.

For love is a flattering mischief, that hath denied aged and wise men a foresight of those evils that too often prove to be the children of that blind father; a passion, that carries us to commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds move feathers, and begets in us an unwearied industry to the attainment of what we desire.

I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle.

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration.