Top 350 Walter Scott Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.”

— Walter Scott

52. “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.”

— Walter Scott

53. “True love’s the gift which God has given To man alone beneath the heaven. It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind.”

— Walter Scott

54. “He turn’d his charger as he spake, Upon the river shore, He gave his bridle reins a shake, Said, “Adieu for evermore, my love, And adieu for evermore.””

— Walter Scott

55. “O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood; Land of the mountain and the flood!”

— Walter Scott

56. “For love is heaven and heaven is love.”

— Walter Scott

57. “High minds, of native pride and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse; Fear, for their scourge, means villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave!”

— Walter Scott

58. “Time rolls his ceaseless course.”

— Walter Scott

59. “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.”

— Walter Scott

60. “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?”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

62. “That day of wrath, that dreadful day. When heaven and earth shall pass away.”

— Walter Scott

63. “Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er.”

— Walter Scott

64. “Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e’er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand!”

— Walter Scott

65. “Oh what a tangled web we weave...”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

67. “The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.”

— Walter Scott

68. “Blessed be his name, who hath appointed the quiet night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh the wearied limbs and to compose the troubled spirit.”

— Walter Scott

69. “Earth walks on Earth, Glittering in gold; Earth goes to Earth, Sooner than it wold; Earth builds on Earth, Palaces and towers; Earth says to Earth, Soon, all shall be ours.”

— Walter Scott

70. “Thus aged men, full loth and slow, The vanities of life forego, And count their youthful follies o’er, Till Memory lends her light no more.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

72. “I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?”

— Walter Scott

73. “I’ll dream no more – by mainly mind Not even in sleep is well resigned. My midnight orisons said o’er, I’ll turn to rest and dream no more.”

— Walter Scott

74. “Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, morn of toil, nor night of waking.”

— Walter Scott

75. “Meat eaten without either mirth or music is ill of digestion.”

— Walter Scott

76. “November’s sky is chill and drear, November’s leaf is red and sear.”

— Walter Scott

77. “Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.”

— Walter Scott

78. “The tear, down childhood’s cheek that flows, Is like the dewdrop on the rose; When next the summer breeze comes by And waves the bush, the flower is dry.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

80. “I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as it was said to me.”

— Walter Scott

81. “A glass of good wine is a gracious creature, and reconciles poor mortality to itself and that is what few things can do.”

— Walter Scott

82. “A mother’s pride, a father’s joy.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

84. “The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it.”

— Walter Scott

85. “Chess is a sad waste of brains.”

— Walter Scott

86. “War is the only game in which both sides lose.”

— Walter Scott

87. “Some touch of Nature’s genial glow.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

89. “Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!”

— Walter Scott

90. “I was born a Scotsman and a bare one. Therefore I was born to fight my way in the world.”

— Walter Scott

91. “Respect was mingled with surprise, And the stern joy which warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

93. “For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of Lochinvar.”

— Walter Scott

94. “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!”

— Walter Scott

95. “O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

97. “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.”

— Walter Scott

98. “Hurry no man’s cattle; you may come to own a donkey yourself.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

100. “A ruin should always be protected but never repaired – thus may we witness full the lingering legacies of the past.”

— Walter Scott