Walter Scott Quotes

…having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes into the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength — there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilzie him of the sin of bloodshed! It is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold how the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.

Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and powerful soul!

One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name

Along thy wild and willow'd shore.

To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life, Is worth an age without a name.

Woman's faith and woman's trust,
Write the characters in dust.

... [T]he pure light of chivalry... distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage;... rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour, raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no evil but disgrace.

My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor.

Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!

Saint George and the Dragon!-Bonny Saint George for Merry England!-The castle is won!

I see a hand you cannot see, Which beckons me away; I hear a voice you cannot hear, Which says I must not stay. MALLET.

there can, we think, be little doubt of the proposition, that the external organs may, from various causes, become so much deranged as to make false representations to the mind; and that, in such cases, men, in the literal sense, really see the empty and false forms and hear the ideal sounds which, in a more primitive state of society, are naturally enough referred to the action of demons or disembodied spirits.

But in this life we are still too weak to see that sight; we have not strength to open our mental eyes, and to behold the beauty of the Good, that incorruptible beauty which no tongue can tell. Then only will you see it, when you cannot speak of it; for the knowledge of it is deep silence, and supression of all the senses. He who has apprehended beauty of the Good can apprehend nothing else; he who has seen it can see nothing else; he cannot hear speech about aught else; he cannot move his body at all; he forgets bodily sensations and all bodily movements, and is still. But the beauty of the Good bathes his mind in light, and takes all his soul up to itself, and draws it forth from the body, and changes the whole man into eternal substance. For it cannot be, my son, that a soul should become a god while it abides in a human body; it must be changed, and then behold the beauty of the Good, and therewith become a god.

But with the morning cool reflection came.

Heaven knows its time; the bullet has its billet.