Sir Walter Scott

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

“There are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or became abortive through opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a tale of true love.”

“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice”

“To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life, Is worth an age without a name.”

“Each age has deemed the new-born yearThe fittest time for festal cheer.”

“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.”

“When true friends meet in adverse hour; 'Tis like a sunbeam through a shower. A watery way an instant seen, The darkly closing clouds between.”

“Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!”

“The autumn winds rushingWaft the leaves that are searest,But our flower was in flushing,When blighting was nearest.Fleet foot on the correi,Sage counsel in cumber,Red hand in the foray,How sound is thy slumber!Like the dew on the mountain,Like the foam on the river,Like the bubble on the fountain,Thou art gone, and for ever!”

“Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.”

“It is from the well of St. Dunstan' said he, 'In which betwixt sun and sun, he baptised five hundred heathen Danes and Britons - blessed be his name!' And applying his black beard to the pitcher, he took a draught much more moderate in quantity than his encomium seemed to warrant.”

“Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of place and of face, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her instance as it has done in many others.”

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

“There is more sense in your language, Bucklaw," replied the Master, "than might have been expected from your conduct - it is too true, our vices steal upon us in forms outwardly fair as those of the demons whom the superstitious represent as intriguing with the human race, and are not discovered in their native hideousness until we have clasped them in our arms.”

“Sir Richard Glendale lifted the fatal paper, read it, and saying, 'Now all is indeed over,' handed it to Maxwell, who said aloud, 'Black Colin Campbell...”

“You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.”

“Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.”

“come he slow or come he fast it is but death that comes at last”

“The schoolmaster is termed, classically, Ludi Magister, because he deprives boys of their play.”

“The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?”

“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”

“He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.”

“We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.”

“Heap on more wood! - the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still.”

“Once upon a time there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft.”

“A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.”

“Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope but not altogether without it.”

“Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.”

“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.”

“Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.”

“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 honour or observation.”

“Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below, and the saints above, for love is heaven, and heaven is love. ”