Walter Scott Quotations

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!

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

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

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

What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.

Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.

A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.

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

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.

Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.

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

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

Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.

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

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above: For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

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.

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.

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

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

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!

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

When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.

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

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

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

One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.

To every lovely lady bright, I wish a gallant faithful knight; To every faithful lover, too, I wish a trusting lady true.

We met each other in junior high back in the '60s. Motown was in its heyday then. So we were no different than most groups in that we wanted to be like the Miracles, the Four Tops and the Temptations. But my brother Scotty and I had grown up listening to groups like the Four Freshmen. Our father was a big jazz enthusiast, too. So what you hear today is an amalgamation of all that.

One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.

We're going to come back the exact same way we left off -- as The Whispers. We do R&B music -- lyric-conscious music that speaks to the adults. That's what The Whispers are all about.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand?

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim. One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.

A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year.

And ne'er did a Grecian chisel traceA nymph, a naiad, or a grace, Of finer form or lovelier face.

Look back, and smile on perils past.

Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.

He that climbs a ladder must begin at the first round.

Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

come he slow or come he fast it is but death that comes at last

God in his goodness sent the grapes To cheer both great and small; Little fools will drink too much And great fools none at all!

Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle your horses, and call up your men; Come open the West Port, and let me gang free, And it's room for the bonnets of Bonny Dundee!

We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon

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

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.

The will to do, the soul to dare.

Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.

Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening.

"Lambe them, lads! lambe them!" a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time.

Some feelings are to mortals given With less of earth in them than heaven.

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

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.

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.

Heap on more wood! - the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still.

November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

If you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life - if you cannot look back to those whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection, still it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty; for your active excretions are due not only to society; but in humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to save yourself and others.

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

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?

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?

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.

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

Credit is like a looking-glass, which when once sullied by a breath, may be wiped clear again; but if once cracked can never be repaired.

Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.

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.

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.

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

Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger; but in being prompt to confront and disarm it.

Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.

A Christmas gambol oft could cheer The poor man's heart through half the year.

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.

Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!

Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges

Loud o'er my head though awful thunders roll, And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, Yet 'tis Thy voice, my God, that bids them fly, Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. Then let the good Thy mighty name revere, And hardened sinners Thy just vengeance fear.

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!

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.

As system virtualization becomes mainstream, IT managers will find a greater need for disk imaging for disaster recovery and systems deployment,.

Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer's queen.

Ambition is no cure for love!

Welcome as the flowers in May.

We do that in our zeal our calmer moment would be afraid to answer.

Necessity--thou best of peacemakers, As well as surest prompter of invention.

Hard toil can roughen form and face, And want call quench the eye's bright grace.

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

From my experience, not one in twenty marries the first love; we build statues of snow and weep to see them melt.

On his bold visage middle age Had slightly press'd its signet sage, Yet had not quench'd the open truth And fiery vehemence of youth: Forward and frolic glee was there, The will to do, the soul to dare.

In man's most dark extremity Oft succour dawns from Heaven.

Great talent has always a little madness mixed up with it.

Heaven know its time; the bullet has its billet

Where, where was Roderick then? One blast upon his bugle horn Were worth a thousand men.

He hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share of man's falsehood.

And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.