Quotes By Walter Scott

There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.

To all, to each, a fair good-night, and pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.

We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.

To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

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

Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.

A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.

Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.

Look back, and smile on perils past.

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

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.

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

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.

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

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

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.

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

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.

Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.

One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.

It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.

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

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above: For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!

When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.

What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.