Quotes from Walter Scott

In the name of God!" said Gurth, "how came they prisoners? and to whom?" "Our master was too ready to fight," said the Jester, "and Athelstane was not ready enough, and no other person was ready at all.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.

Hurry no man's cattle; you may come to own a donkey yourself

Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee. I prithee, dear moon, now show to me the form and the features, the speech and degree, of the man that true lover of mine shall be.

The man who is deserving the name is the one whose thoughts and exertions are for others rather than for himself.

True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the heaven.

Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!

I was not always a man of woe.

Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.

The rose is fairest when 't is budding new, And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears. The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew, And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.

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

Meat eaten without either mirth or music is ill of digestion.

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.

Call it not vain: they do not err Who say that when the poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies.

Sensibility is nature's celestial spring.

Some touch of Nature's genial glow.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own my native land!

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

God in his goodness sent the grapes To cheer both great and small; Little fools will drink too much And great fools none at all!

Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.

God forgive me for having thought it possible that a schoolmaster could be out and out a rational being.

When Israel, of the Lord belov'd, Out of the land of bondage came, Her fathers' God before her mov'd, An awful guide in smoke and flame.

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.

Oh, poverty parts good company.