Top 50 Izaak Walton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.”

— Izaak Walton

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Friends Quotes

2. “You cannot lose what you never had.”

— Izaak Walton

3. “God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.”

— Izaak Walton

4. “I have laid aside business, and gone a’fishing.”

— Izaak Walton

5. “Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy.”

— Izaak Walton

6. “If you can’t be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.”

— Izaak Walton

7. “Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration.”

— Izaak Walton

8. “No life is so happy and so pleasant as the life of the well-govern’d angler.”

— Izaak Walton

9. “Angling may be said to be so like the Mathematics that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.”

— Izaak Walton

10. “Blessings upon all that hate contention, and love quietnesse, and vertue, and Angling.”

— Izaak Walton

11. “God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

— Izaak Walton

12. “I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing.”

— Izaak Walton

13. “There are offences given and offences not given but taken.”

— Izaak Walton

14. “The Waters are Nature’s storehouse in which she locks up her wonders...”

— Izaak Walton

15. “These poor rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly.”

— Izaak Walton

16. “Let us be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience.”

— Izaak Walton

17. “The person who loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.”

— Izaak Walton

18. “Doubtless God Could Have Made A Better Berry, But Doubtless God Never Did.”

— Izaak Walton

19. “He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping. Therefore be sure you look to that, and in the next place look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to a good conscience.”

— Izaak Walton

20. “Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.”

— Izaak Walton

21. “As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.”

— Izaak Walton

22. “O, sir, doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?”

— Izaak Walton

23. “We may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

— Izaak Walton

24. “It was wisely said, by a man of great observation, that there are as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them.”

— Izaak Walton

25. “Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.”

— Izaak Walton

26. “But God, who is ableto prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own.”

— Izaak Walton

27. “You will find angling to be like the virtue of humanity, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of blessing attending upon it.”

— Izaak Walton

28. “This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.”

— Izaak Walton

29. “Blessings we enjoy daily, and for most of them, because they be so common, we forget to pay our praises. But let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him who still protects us, and gives us flowers and showers and meat and content.”

— Izaak Walton

30. “I have then with pleasure concluded with Solomon, Everything is beautiful in his season.”

— Izaak Walton

31. “Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.”

— Izaak Walton

32. “Words are men’s daughters, but God’s sons are things.”

— Izaak Walton

33. “I am, Sir, a brother of the angle.”

— Izaak Walton

34. “The will of man is by his reason swayed.”

— Izaak Walton

35. “And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date.”

— Izaak Walton

36. “Lord, what music hast thou provided for Thy saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!”

— Izaak Walton

37. “That which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.”

— Izaak Walton

38. “So long as thou are ignorant be not ashamed to learn. Ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities, and when justified, the chiefest of all follies.”

— Izaak Walton

39. “An excellent angler, and now with God.”

— Izaak Walton

40. “Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.”

— Izaak Walton

41. “Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.”

— Izaak Walton

42. “Affliction is a divine diet which though it be not pleasing to mankind, yet almighty God hath often imposed it as a good, thought bitter, physic, to those children whose souls are dearest to him.”

— Izaak Walton

43. “If all the theories were correct, there wouldn’t be a fish left in all of our lakes and rivers and streams.”

— Izaak Walton

44. “Let me tell you that every misery I miss is a new blessing.”

— Izaak Walton

45. “A companion that feasts the company with and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.”

— Izaak Walton

46. “Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice.”

— Izaak Walton

47. “I have known a very good, fisher angle diligently four or six hours for a river carp, and not have a bite.”

— Izaak Walton

48. “We see but the outside of a rich man’s happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time consuming herself.”

— Izaak Walton

49. “It is agreed by most men, that the Eele is a most daintie fish; the Romans have esteemed her the Helena of their feasts, and some The Queen of pleasure.”

— Izaak Walton

50. “Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so...”

— Izaak Walton