Quotes from Walter Scott

Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future!—Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance.—But thy

The sights and sentiments that attend civil conflict, are of a kind to reconcile the human heart, however generous and humane by nature, to severe language and cruel actions.

It is wonderful how people's judgment is blinded by their passions, and how apt we are to find plausible and even satisfactory reasons, for doing what our interest, or that of the party we have embraced, strongly recommends.

Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?

That which is neither ill nor well. That which belongs not to Heaven nor to hell, A wreath of the mist, a bubble of the stream, 'Twixt a waking thought and a sleeping dream; A form that men spy With the half-shut eye. In the beams of the setting sun, am I.

The tale of the Surgeon's Daughter formed part of the second series of Chronicles of the Canongate, published in 1827; but has been separated from the stories of the Highland Widow, &c., which it originally accompanied, and deferred to the close of this collection, for reasons which printers and publishers will understand, and which would hardly interest the general reader. The Author

to be innocent of ill is no security ;

he is not fit to visit strange countries, who cannot rule his tongue before his own countrymen

Upon subjects which interested him, and when quite at ease, he possessed that flow of natural, and somewhat florid eloquence, which has been supposed as powerful as figure, fashion, fame, or fortune, in winning the female heart. There

and that which is done of goodwill must, to my thinking, be accepted favourably. Had

and that which is done of goodwill must, to my thinking, be accepted favourably. Had it been otherwise, methinks they had ere now been enlightened to do better.

Which of them would sit six hours on a wet hillside to hear a godly sermon?

Sir Everard had never been himself a student, and, like his sister Miss Rachael Waverley, held the vulgar doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with the eye, is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to convey. With

Your lordship's servant has a sensible, natural, pretty idea of military matters; somewhat irregular, though, and smells a little too much of selling the bear's skin before he has hunted him.

I will never sell my liberty for gold.

And ne er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a naiad or a grace Of finer form or lovelier face.......

No drone shall feed on my honeycomb.

Nor did I forget what is the natural pleasure of every man who has been a reader;… filling the shelves of a tolerably large library.

La vendetta, caro signore, la vendetta, la quale, pur essendo un peccato da gentiluomo come il vino, le orge, con il loro et coetera, è altrettanto poco cristiano , e non altrettanto senza effusione di sangue. E' meglio scavalcare il recinto di un parco per appostare una dama od una donzella, che sparare contro un vecchio.

Sleep, like other earthly blessings, is niggard of its favours when most courted.

Chapter XX Happy's the wooing That's not long a-doing

But if I accept these conditions, said Fosti, what shall be the compensation of the king of Norway, my ally 'i Seven feet of English land, answered the envoy; or, as Hardrada is a giant, perhaps a little more.

It is only when taught deceit by the commerce of the world, that we learn to shroud our character from observation, and to disguise our real sentiments from those with whom we are placed in communion.

Of this disposition, to see as much of the supernatural as is seen by others around, or, in other words, to trust to the eyes of others rather than to our own