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.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Money
Where lives the man that has not tried how mirth can into folly glide, and folly into sin!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Fools
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, Marriage, Snow, Ideals
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Face, Faces, Charm
A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.
—Walter Scott
What can we see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ancestry
Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger; but in being prompt to confront and disarm it.
—Walter Scott
True love’s the gift which God hath given to man alone beneath the heaven. The silver link, the silver tie, which heart to heart, and mind to mind, in body and in soul can bind.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Love
There never did, and never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to the exercise of resolute self-denial.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Excellence
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Deceit, Honesty
That man may safely venture on his way, who is so guided that he cannot stray.
—Walter Scott
Come he slow or come he fast. It is but death who comes at last.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Dying, Death
The reason of the law is the law.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Law
The will to do, the soul to dare.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Bravery, Courage
Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to all the world besides.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Selfishness
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Literature
Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Soldiers
The most learned, acute, and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume. The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore, new light continually beams from this source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct, and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men; and he will at last leave the world confessing, that the more he studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he had of his own ignorance, and of their inestimable value.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Bible
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.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Teamwork, Time Management, Value of a Day
When passion rules, how rare the hours that fall to virtue’s share.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Passion
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.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Lawyers, Law
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Storytelling
Better that they had ne’er been born who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
—Walter Scott
Court not the critic’s smile nor dread his frown.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Criticism
Dinna curse him, sir; I have heard it said that a curse was like a stone flung up to the heavens, and most likely to return on the head of him that sent it.
—Walter Scott
Courtesy of temper, when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight’s girdle around the breast of a base clown.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Temper
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
Topics: Excess
Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
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!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Slander, Insults
The legendary tablets of the past.
—Walter Scott
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- 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
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