There is nothing for which one—at least I—should so much envy as Sir W. Scott as the bold facility with which he seized a subject and by the first gl… - John Wilson Croker

My memory and observation of public affairs are about coeval with that event [the French Revolution<nowiki>]</nowiki>. I was in my ninth year when the Bastille was taken; it naturally made a great impression on me, and the bloody scenes that so rapidly followed rendered that impression unfavourable. Such also was the feeling of my wise and excellent parents, and an alliance between our family and that of Mr. Burke helped to confirm us in that great man's prophetic opinions, which every event from that day to this appears to me to have wonderfully illustrated and fulfilled.

I prefer an ounce of fact to a ton of imagination.

The public mind of France had become so excited and perverted by a variety of causes great and small, and of grievances real and imaginary, that at the proclamation for assembling the States-General the whole nation went mad, and to this hour has never recovered from its insanity.