Quotes by Sir Walter Scott

“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.”

“If you once turn on your side after the hour at which you ought to rise, it is all over”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

“I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as it was said to me”

“Death - the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening”

“A sound head, an honest heart, and an humble spirit are the three best guides through time and to eternity”

“Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears”

“True loves the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the heaven.”

“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.”

“Of all the vices drinking is the most incompatible with greatness”

“Tis plain that there is not in nature a point of stability to be found: everything either ascends or declines. When wars are ended abroad, sedition begins at home, and when men are freed from fighting for necessity, they quarrel through ambition.”

“Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.”

“Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.”

“The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier”

“Court not the critics smile nor dread his frown”

“Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges”

“Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.”

“Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit”

“Just at the age twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth”