Top 15 Izaak Walton Quotes

Let the blessing of St. Peter's Master be...upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his Providence, and be quiet and go a-angling.

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.

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

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.

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.

No man can lose what he never had.

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.

An excellent angler, and now with God.

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

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."

You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.

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

Sir Henry Wotton was a most dear lover and a frequent practiser of the Art of Angling; of which he would say, "'T was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;" and "that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it."

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