Top 350 Walter Scott Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.”

— Walter Scott

152. “Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome of which I have read so much.”

— Walter Scott

153. “Rebecca! she who could prefer death to dishonor must have a proud and powerful soul!”

— Walter Scott

154. “What skilful limner e’er would choose To paint the rainbow’s varying hues, Unless to mortal it were given To dip his brush in dyes of heaven?”

— Walter Scott

155. “Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

157. “For Love will still be lord of all.”

— Walter Scott

158. “I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom,” he said to himself, “but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”

— Walter Scott

159. “And my father!-oh, my father! evil is it with his daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden locks of youth!”

— Walter Scott

160. “Literature is a great staff, but a very sorry crutch.”

— Walter Scott

161. “The rose is fairest when ’t is budding new, And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears. The rose is sweetest wash’d with morning dew, And love is loveliest when embalm’d in tears.”

— Walter Scott

162. “Oh, on that day, that wrathful day, When man to judgment wakes front clay, Be Thou, O Christ, the sinner’s stay, Though heaven and earth shall pass away.”

— Walter Scott

163. “A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love make the flame blaze the brighter.”

— Walter Scott

164. “Woman’s faith and woman’s trust, Write the characters in dust.”

— Walter Scott

165. “Then hush thee, my darling, take rest while you may, For strife comes with manhood, and waking with day.”

— Walter Scott

166. “Where shall the lover rest, Whom the fates sever From his true maiden’s breast, Parted for ever? Where, through groves deep and high, Sounds the far billow, Where early violets die, Under the willow.”

— Walter Scott

167. “I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.”

— Walter Scott

168. “Mellow nuts have the hardest rind.”

— Walter Scott

169. “My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.”

— Walter Scott

170. “Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome. And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr’d.”

— Walter Scott

171. “Dear to me is my bonnie white steed; Oft has he helped me at pinch of need.”

— Walter Scott

172. “The Scotch, it is well known, are more remarkable for the exercise of their intellectual powers, than for the keenness of their feelings ; they are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, and more attracted by acute and argumentative reasoning on doctrinal points, than influenced by the enthusiastic appeals to the heart and to the passions, by which popular preachers in other countries win the favour of their hearers.”

— Walter Scott

173. “As hope and fear alternate chase Our course through life’s uncertain race.”

— Walter Scott

174. “A sinful heart makes feeble hand.”

— Walter Scott

175. “But search the land of living men, Where wilt thou find their like again?”

— Walter Scott

176. “The gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound.”

— Walter Scott

177. “Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.”

— Walter Scott

178. “The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.”

— Walter Scott

179. “See yonder rock from which the fountain gushes; is it less compact of adamant, though waters flow from it? Firm hearts have moister eyes.”

— Walter Scott

180. “I am she, O most bucolical juvenal, under whose charge are placed the milky mothers of the herd.”

— Walter Scott

181. “We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold, But seldom think upon our God, Who tinged these clouds with gold.”

— Walter Scott

182. “Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains, Winning from Reason’s hand the reins, Pity and woe! for such a mind Is soft contemplative, and kind.”

— Walter Scott

183. “God forgive me for having thought it possible that a schoolmaster could be out and out a rational being.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

185. “The race of humankind would perish did they cease to aid each other.”

— Walter Scott

186. “Never was flattery lost on a poet’s ear; a simple race, they waste their toil for the vain tribute of a smile.”

— Walter Scott

187. “Welcome as the flowers in May.”

— Walter Scott

188. “Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.”

— Walter Scott

189. “I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!”

— Walter Scott

190. “In man’s most dark extremity Oft succour dawns from Heaven.”

— Walter Scott

191. “It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it.”

— Walter Scott

192. “It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.”

— Walter Scott

193. “But patriotism, as it is the fairest, so it is often the most suspicious mask of other feelings;.”

— Walter Scott

194. “Threatened folk live long.”

— Walter Scott

195. “Though varying wishes, hopes, and fears, Fever’d the progress of these years, Yet now, days, weeks, and months but seem The recollection of a dream.”

— Walter Scott

196. “The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.”

— Walter Scott

197. “Call it not vain: they do not err Who say that when the poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies.”

— Walter Scott

198. “Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges.”

— Walter Scott

199. “Love, to her ear, was but a name, Combin’d with vanity and shame; Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all Bounded within the cloister wall.”

— Walter Scott

200. “In listening mood she seemed to stand, The guardian Naiad of the strand.”

— Walter Scott