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
As good play for nothing, you know, as work for nothing.
—Walter Scott
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, Value of a Day, Time Management
The reason of the law is the law.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Law
Heap on the wood!-the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Christmas
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
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
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: Snow, Ideals, Responsibility, Marriage
A man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach, either of real good breeding or good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute points of fashionable etiquette.
—Walter Scott
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Charm, Face, Faces
Then, wearied by the uncertainty and difficulties with which each scheme appeared to be attended, he bent up his mind to the strong effort of shaking off his love, like dew-drops from the lion’s mane, and resuming those studies and that career of life which his unrequited affection had so long and so fruitlessly interrupted. In this last resolution he endeavoured to fortify himself by every argument which pride, as well as reason, could suggest.
—Walter Scott
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Honesty, Deceit
Youth, when thought is speech and speech is truth.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Youth
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
—Walter Scott
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
Better that they had ne’er been born who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
—Walter Scott
When passion rules, how rare the hours that fall to virtue’s share.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Passion
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Cats
Just at the age ‘twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth
—Walter Scott
Topics: Youth
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
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Wine
I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right, but when I am a little in the wrong.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Friendship
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
Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Past, The Past
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
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ambition
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
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Adversity
Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Poetry, Poets
Distance in truth produces in idea the same effect as in real perspective.—Objects are softened, rounded, and rendered doubly graceful.—The harsher and more ordinary points of character are melted down, and those by which it is rememered are the more striking outlines that mark sublimity, grace, or beauty.—There are mists, too, as in the natural horizon, to conceal what is less pleasing in distant objects; and there are happy lights, to stream in full glory upon those points which can profit by brilliant illumination.
—Walter Scott
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: Insults, Slander
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: Kindness, Giving, Help, Assistance, Humanity, Aid, Service
When we think of death, a thousand sins, which we have trodden as worms beneath our feet, rise up against us as flaming serpents.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Sin
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Indecision, Reason, Goals
Court not the critic’s smile nor dread his frown.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Criticism
Though wit be very useful, yet unless a wise man has the keeping of it, that knows when, where, and how to apply it, it is like wild fire, that runs hissing about, and blows up everything that comes in its way.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Wit
Commend me to sterling honesty though clad in rags.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Honesty
A sound head, an honest heart, and an humble spirit are the three best guides through time and to eternity.
—Walter Scott
Look at a gown of gold, and you will at least get a sleeve of it.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Wealth
The chain of friendship, however bright, does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Friendship
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