The race of mankind would perish, did they cease to aid each other. From the time that the mother binds the child’s head till the moment that some kind assistant wipes the death-damp from the brow of the dying, we cannot exist without mutual help. All, therefore, that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-mortals; no one who holds the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Giving, Kindness, Humanity, Service
Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
From my experience, not one in twenty marries the first love; we build statues of snow, and weep to see them melt.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Responsibility, Snow, Marriage, Ideals
The will to do, the soul to dare.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Bravery, Courage
As good play for nothing, you know, as work for nothing.
—Walter Scott
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
—Walter Scott
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Honesty, Deceit
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
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Mistakes, Discovery, Failure, Greatness
A sound head, an honest heart, and an humble spirit are the three best guides through time and to eternity.
—Walter Scott
Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain, — cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
In peace, love tunes the shepherd’s reed; in war, he mounts the warrior’s steed; in halls, in gay attire is seen; in hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below, and saints above; for love is heaven, and heaven is love.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Love
Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott
Topics: The Past, Past
This world is a dream within a dream; and as we grow older, each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from childhood; the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as visionary; and the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream. Death the last sleep? No! It is the last and final awakening!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Dying, World, Death
Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Dying, Death
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Literature
The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small importance, but in enlarging, improving, and correcting the information you possess, by the authority of others.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Conversation
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Goals, Indecision
Court not the critic’s smile nor dread his frown.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Criticism
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Robert Louis Stevenson Scottish Novelist
J. M. Barrie Scottish Novelist
Hugh Blair Scottish Minister, Scholar
Robert Burns Scottish Poet, Songwriter
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir Scottish Novelist
Tobias Smollett Scottish Poet
George MacDonald Scottish Poet, Novelist
Arthur Conan Doyle Scottish Writer
Thomas Carlyle Scottish Historian, Essayist
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey Scottish Judge, Critic