Top 350 Walter Scott Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 7 of 8

301. “In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer.”

— Walter Scott

302. “Give me an honest laugher.”

— Walter Scott

303. “Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.”

— Walter Scott

304. “I wish to Heaven these scoundrels were condemned to be squeezed to death in their own presses. I am told there are not less than a dozen of their papers now published in town, and no wonder that they are obliged to invent lies to find sale for their journals.”

— Walter Scott

305. “Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.”

— Walter Scott

306. “Nothing could be more gracefully majestic than his step and manner, had they not been marked by a predominant air of haughtiness, easily acquired by the exercise of unresisted authority.”

— Walter Scott

307. “Chapter XVII The Hold of a Highland Robber.”

— Walter Scott

308. “Art thou a friend to Roderick?”

— Walter Scott

309. “All my life long I have been more melted by the distress under which a strong, proud, and powerful mind is compelled to give way, than by the more easily excited sorrows of softer dispositions.”

— Walter Scott

310. “Chapter XX Happy’s the wooing That’s not long a-doing.”

— Walter Scott

311. “Normans both; but Norman or Saxon, the hospitality of Rotherwood must not be impeached: they are welcome, since they have chosen to halt; more welcome would they have been to have ridden further on their way.”

— Walter Scott

312. “Thus, in regard to the ear, the next organ in importance to the eye, we are repeatedly deceived by such sounds as are imperfectly gathered up and erroneously apprehended. From the false impressions received from this organ also arise consequences similar to those derived from erroneous reports made by the organs of sight. A whole class of superstitious observances arise, and are grounded upon inaccurate and imperfect hearing.”

— Walter Scott

313. “Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of place and of face, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her instance as it has done in many others.”

— Walter Scott

314. “Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much of Sir Everard’s discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other trifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium.”

— Walter Scott

315. “They say that a lady’s mind is always expressed in her postscript, so I would have you think that the most important part of your commission lies in what I have last said to you.”

— Walter Scott

316. “The Chiefs of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Lochiel, whose clans, equal in courage and military fame to any in the Highlands, lay within the neighbourhood of the scene of action, dispatched the fiery cross through their vassals, to summon every one who could bear arms to meet the King’s lieutenant, and to join the standards of their respective Chiefs, as they marched towards Inverlochy.”

— Walter Scott

317. “Me, on whom, in case of failure – which Heaven forefend! –.”

— Walter Scott

318. “Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates.”

— Walter Scott

319. “If thou readest the Scripture,” said the Jewess, “and the lives of the saints, only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most healthful and necessary herbs.”

— Walter Scott

320. “The sights and sentiments that attend civil conflict, are of a kind to reconcile the human heart, however generous and humane by nature, to severe language and cruel actions.”

— Walter Scott

321. “Ambition, policy, bravery, all far beyond their sphere, here learned the fate of mortals.”

— Walter Scott

322. “It must also be remembered, that to the auricular deceptions practised by the means of ventriloquism or otherwise, may be traced many of the most successful impostures which credulity has received as supernatural communications.”

— Walter Scott

323. “It was a reign of minority, when the strongest had the best right, and when acts of usurpation were frequent amongst those who had much power and little conscience.”

— Walter Scott

324. “Her clear blue eye, which sat enshrined beneath a graceful eyebrow of brown sufficiently marked to give expression to the forehead, seemed capable to kindle as well as melt, to command as well as to beseech.”

— Walter Scott

325. “It is the pest of our profession that we seldom see the best side of human nature.”

— Walter Scott

326. “Such an institution could only prevail at a time when ordinary means of justice were excluded by the hand of power, and when, in order to bring the guilty to punishment, it required all the influence and authority of such a confederacy. In no other country than one exposed to every species of feudal tyranny, and deprived of every ordinary mode of obtaining justice or redress, could such a system have taken root and flourished.”

— Walter Scott

327. “I HAVE already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged. He.”

— Walter Scott

328. “But I would have vengeance to fall on the head, not on the hand; on the tyrannical and oppressive government which designed and directed these premeditated and reiterated insults, not on the tools of office which they employed in the execution of the injuries they designed you.”

— Walter Scott

329. “The features of Rashleigh were such, as, having looked upon, we in vain wish to banish from our memory, to which they recur as objects of painful curiosity, although we dwell upon them with a feeling of dislike, and even of disgust.”

— Walter Scott

330. “Peace is an inestimable jewel; but it will be soon snatched from those who are not prepared with heart and hand to defend it.”

— Walter Scott

331. “Volume I Chapter I Introductory.”

— Walter Scott

332. “Chapter X Rose Bradwardine and her Father.”

— Walter Scott

333. “Sir Everard had never been himself a student, and, like his sister Miss Rachael Waverley, held the vulgar doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with the eye, is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to convey. With.”

— Walter Scott

334. “The voice of some absent, or probably some deceased, relative was, in such cases, heard as repeating the party’s name. Sometimes the aerial summoner intimated his own death, and at others it was no uncommon circumstance that the person who fancied himself so called, died.”

— Walter Scott

335. “All however agreed, that the spot was fatal to the Ravenswood family; and to drink of the waters of the well or even approach its brink, was ominous to a descendant of that house, as for a Grahame to wear green, a Bruce to kill a spider, or a St. Clair to cross the Ord on a Monday.”

— Walter Scott

336. “He was, besides, the child of a doting grandmother, whose too solicitous attention to him soon taught him a sort of diffidence in himself, with a disposition to overrate his own importance, which is one of the very worst consequences that children deduce from over-indulgence.”

— Walter Scott

337. “It only remained,” he said, “that the noble Chiefs assembled, laying aside every lesser consideration, should unite, heart and hand, in the common cause; send the fiery cross through their clans, in order to collect their utmost force, and form their junction with such celerity as to leave the enemy no time, either for preparation, or recovery from the panic which would spread at the first sound of their pibroch.”

— Walter Scott

338. “I am not sure if the ladies understand the full value of the influence of absence, nor do I think it wise to teach it them, lest, like the Clelias and Mandanes of yore, they should resume the humour of sending their lovers to banishment.”

— Walter Scott

339. “As every reader has experienced who may have chanced to be in such a situation, it is extremely difficult to maintain the full dignity of an offended person, in the presence of a beautiful girl, whatever reason we may have for being angry with her.”

— Walter Scott

340. “Great God! hast Thou given men Thine own image that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!”

— Walter Scott

341. “Alas! how many ways does woman’s affection find to work out her own misery!”

— Walter Scott

342. “It is ill arguing against anything from its misuse.”

— Walter Scott

343. “I’m sprighted with a fool – Sprighted and anger’d worse.”

— Walter Scott

344. “It is by giving fair names to foul actions that those who would start at real vice are led to practise its lessons, under the disguise of virtue.”

— Walter Scott

345. “The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson, – – from earliest possibility, I suppose, who lived with half the gay world at hack and manger, and now obliges such as will not pay hushmoney with a history of whatever she.”

— Walter Scott

346. “Dinna curse him, sir,” said the old woman; “I have heard a good man say that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and maist like to return on the head that sent it.”

— Walter Scott

347. “Besides, when a man of talent shows himself an able and useful partisan, his party will continue to protect and accredit him, in spite of conduct the most contradictory to their own principles.”

— Walter Scott

348. “There are few more melancholy sensations than those with which we regard scenes of past pleasure when altered and deserted.”

— Walter Scott

349. “But the whole circumstances of time, place, and incident, combined at once to awaken his imagination, and to call upon him for a manly and decisive tone of conduct, leaving to fate to dispose of the issue. Should.”

— Walter Scott

350. “It is wonderful how people’s judgment is blinded by their passions, and how apt we are to find plausible and even satisfactory reasons, for doing what our interest, or that of the party we have embraced, strongly recommends.”

— Walter Scott