Walter Scott (1771–1832): Scottish novelist, poet and playwright. The library holds 174 quotes by Walter Scott, drawn from Marmion, Lady of the Lake, Lay of the Last Minstrel and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
O woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
Teach self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.
Chance will not do the work:
Chance sends the breeze,
But if the pilot slumber at the helm,
The very wind that wafts us towards the port
May dash us on the shelves.
Happiest they of human race,
To whom God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way;
And better had they ne’er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
“No” is a surly, honest fellow—speaks his mind rough and round at once. “But” is a sneaking, evasive, half-bred, exceptuous sort of conjunction, which comes to pull away the cup just when it is at your lips.
He who indulges his senses in any excesses renders himself obnoxious to his own reason; and, to gratify the brute in him, displeases the man, and sets his two natures at variance.
The secrets of great folk are just like the wild beasts that are shut up in cages. Keep them hard and fast snecked up, and it’s a’ very weel or better—but ance let them out, they will turn and rend you.
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.
Recommending secrecy where a dozen of people are acquainted with the circumstance to be concealed, is only putting the truth in masquerade, for the story will be circulated under twenty different shapes.
“Lambe them, lads! lambe them!” a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First’s time.
Dinna curse him, sir; I have heard a good man say that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and maist like to return on his head that sent it.
The human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress in disentangling it.
The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small consequence, but in enlarging, improving and correcting the information you possess by the authority of others.