Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was a Scottish poet and novelist. He is an acknowledged master of the historical novel and was influential in his treatment of rural themes and the use of regional speech.

Born in Edinburgh into an affluent middle-class family, Scott experienced an attack of infantile paralysis that left him permanently lame from the age of two. He was sent to his grandfather’s farm to restore his health; there, he was exposed to Scottish history through ballads and stories—these shaped his storytelling talent. Scott trained in law at the University of Edinburgh, but his main interest lay in literature, which he pursued first as an editor and a translator.

Scott established himself as a major poet and a scholarly editor. Scott first made his mark as a poet—he collected, edited, and adapted ballads. He wrote the popular such famous narrative poems as The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808.)

Scott is best known as the author of the Waverley novels (named after the first of the series, Waverley, 1814.) His novels, which usually feature accounts of chivalry and romance, changed the landscape of the novel, making the historical novel not just a national but also a planetary form. Waverley was an immediate success, and it was followed by a series of Scottish novels, including Rob Roy (1818) and The Heart of Midlothian (1818.) Among his later novels are Ivanhoe (1819,) Kenilworth (1821,) and Quentin Durward (1823.)

During his lifetime and for almost a century after his death, Scott was a massively popular writer. Scott’s influence influenced not only English but also world literature in the 19th century: he left his mark on writers as varied as Mark Twain, Alexander Pushkin, Stendhal, James Fenimore Cooper, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Walter Scott

Love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Tears

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

The legendary tablets of the past.
—Walter Scott

Good wine needs neither bush nor preface to make it welcome.
—Walter Scott
Topics: One liners

That man may safely venture on his way, who is so guided that he cannot stray.
—Walter Scott

Youth, when thought is speech and speech is truth.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Youth

Teach self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Self-Discovery

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Deceit, Honesty

Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than the habit of drinking.
—Walter Scott

To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Optimism, Determination, Courage, Secrets of Success, Prudence, Safety, Positive Attitudes

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

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

Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ambition

Oh, why should man’s success remove the very charms that wake his love!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Love

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Education

Haste, holy Friar,
Haste, ere the sinner shall expire!
Of all his guilt let him be shriven,
And smooth his path from earth to heaven!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Guilt

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Hope

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: Difficulties, Adversity

A lightweight, by definition, is a man who cannot assert his authority over the national press, cannot manipulate reporters, cannot finesse questions, prevent leaks or command a professional public relations operation.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Authority

Vengeance, deep-brooding other the slain, Had locked the source of softer woe, And burning pride and high disdain Forbade the rising tear to flow.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Vengeance

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

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

The sincere and earnest approach of the Christian to the throne of the Almighty, teaches the best lesson of patience under affliction, since wherefore should we mock the Deity with supplications, when we insult him by murmuring under his decrees?
—Walter Scott
Topics: Patience

And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Wine

If you once turn on your side after the hour at which you ought to rise, it is all over. Bolt up at once.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Discipline

What can we see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ancestry

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

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

A grandfather is no longer a social institution.—Men do not live in the past.—They merely look back.—Forward is the universal cry.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ancestry

It is only when I daily 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. But the first broadside puts all to rights.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Secrets of Success, Focus, Concentration

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