Walter Scott Quotes

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

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

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

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

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

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

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

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

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

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

Look back, and smile on perils past.

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

Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.

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.

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

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

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!

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

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

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.

Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

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

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.

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.