Top 350 Walter Scott Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Spangling the wave with lights as vain As pleasures in the vale of pain, That dazzle as they fade.”

— Walter Scott

202. “Still are the thoughts to memory dear.”

— Walter Scott

203. “Mystery has great charms for womanhood.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

205. “As long as the Fates permit, live cheerfully.”

— Walter Scott

206. “Stood for his country’s glory fast, And nailed her colors to the mast!”

— Walter Scott

207. “Hunger and fear are excellent casuists.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

209. “No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather’s weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.”

— Walter Scott

210. “Heaven know its time; the bullet has its billet.”

— Walter Scott

211. “Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!”

— Walter Scott

212. “In the lost battle, Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war’s rattle With groans of the dying.”

— Walter Scott

213. “A fool’s wild speech confounds the wise.”

— Walter Scott

214. “The heart-sick faintness of the hope delayed!”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

216. “Welcome as the flowers in May.”

— Walter Scott

217. “We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.”

— Walter Scott

218. “He who indulges his sense in any excesses renders himself obnoxious to his own reason; and, to gratify the brute in him, displeases the man, and sets his two natures at variance.”

— Walter Scott

219. “In love quarrels the party that loves the most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.”

— Walter Scott

220. “A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination.”

— Walter Scott

221. “Necessity – thou best of peacemakers, As well as surest prompter of invention.”

— Walter Scott

222. “Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

224. “The most learned, acute, and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume.”

— Walter Scott

225. “The playbill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.”

— Walter Scott

226. “Here is neither want of appetite nor mouths, Pray heaven we be not scant of meat or mirth.”

— Walter Scott

227. “Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.”

— Walter Scott

228. “That which is neither ill nor well. That which belongs not to Heaven nor to hell, A wreath of the mist, a bubble of the stream, ‘Twixt a waking thought and a sleeping dream; A form that men spy With the half-shut eye. In the beams of the setting sun, am I.”

— Walter Scott

229. “Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.”

— Walter Scott

230. “I was not always a man of woe.”

— Walter Scott

231. “Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror!”

— Walter Scott

232. “Hospitality to the exile, and broken bones to the tyrant.”

— Walter Scott

233. “Certainly,” quoth Athelstane, “women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted.”

— Walter Scott

234. “The sickening pang of hope deferr’d.”

— Walter Scott

235. “Besides, Rose Bradwardine, beautiful and amiable as we have described her, had not precisely the sort of beauty or merit which captivates a romantic imagination in early youth. She was too frank, too confiding, too kind; amiable qualities, undoubtedly, but destructive of the marvellous, with which a youth of imagination delights to dress the empress of his affections.”

— Walter Scott

236. “Prior Aymer, who pushed his mule betwixt his companion and.”

— Walter Scott

237. “Contentions fierce, Ardent, and dire, spring from no petty cause.”

— Walter Scott

238. “Oh, poverty parts good company.”

— Walter Scott

239. “How nearly can what we most despise and hate, approach in outward manner to that which we most venerate!”

— Walter Scott

240. “Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.”

— Walter Scott

241. “Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden’s fatal field, When shiver’d was fair Scotland’s spear, And broken was her shield!”

— Walter Scott

242. “Spur not an unbroken horse; put not your plowshare too deep into new land.”

— Walter Scott

243. “What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.”

— Walter Scott

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

— Walter Scott

245. “Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.”

— Walter Scott

246. “Hard toil can roughen form and face, And want call quench the eye’s bright grace.”

— Walter Scott

247. “Sensibility is nature’s celestial spring.”

— Walter Scott

248. “It was soon plain that what crumbs of reason the Bear had not devoured were to be picked up by the Hen; but the confusion which appeared to prevail favoured Edward’s resolution to evade the gaily circling glass. The others began to talk thick and at once, each performing his own part in the conversation without the least respect to his neighbour.”

— Walter Scott

249. “Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future! – Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. – But thy.”

— Walter Scott

250. “It is more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.”

— Walter Scott