Walter Scott Quotes

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood!

A mother's pride, a father's joy.

Chivalry! — -why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection — -the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant — -Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.

Randolph, thy wreath has lost a rose.

That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away,
What power shall be the sinner's stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

Perhaps the perusal of such works may, without injustice, be compared with the use of opiates, baneful, when habitually and constantly resorted to, but of most blessed power in those moments of pain and of langour, when the whole head is sore, and the whole heart sick. If those who rail indiscriminately at this species of composition, were to consider the quantity of actual pleasure it produces, and the much greater proportion of real sorrow and distress which it alleviates, their philanthropy ought to moderate their critical pride, or religious intolerance.

When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

And please return it. You may think this a strange request, but I find that although my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all of them good bookkeepers.

Of all the train, none escaped except Wamba, who showed upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense.

The playbill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.

It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is no impossibility to brave men.

Where shall he find, in foreign land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand! — There is no breeze upon the fern,
No ripple on the lake,
Upon her eyry nods the erne,
The deer has sought the brake;
The small birds will not sing aloud,
The springing trout lies still,
So darkly glooms yon thunder-cloud,
That swathes, as with a purple shroud