Walter Scott Heart Quotations

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!

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?

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

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.

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

The heart-sick faintness of the hope delayed!

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

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.

I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice

It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.

...crystal and hearts would lose all their merit in the world if it were not for their fragility.

A sinful heart makes feeble hand.

Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart.

A sound head, an honest heart, and an humble spirit are the three best guides through time and to eternity.

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

Independently of the curious circumstance that such tales should be found existing in very different countries and languages, which augurs a greater poverty of human invention than we would have expected, there is also a sort of wild fairy interest in them, which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good-boy stories which have been in later years composed for them.

Steady of heart and stout of hand.