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
What can we see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ancestry
Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Hope
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
To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Optimism, Courage, Positive Attitudes, Safety, Secrets of Success, Determination, Prudence
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
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, Aid, Kindness, Assistance, Service, Humanity, Help
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Charm, Faces, Face
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
A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.
—Walter Scott
Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Gardening, One liners, Beauty
Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Death, Dying
When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Loneliness
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Ambition
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
Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Tears
Just at the age ‘twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth
—Walter Scott
Topics: Youth
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
As good play for nothing, you know, as work for nothing.
—Walter Scott
Oh, why should man’s success remove the very charms that wake his love!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Love
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
Youth, when thought is speech and speech is truth.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Youth
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
That man may safely venture on his way, who is so guided that he cannot stray.
—Walter Scott
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
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: Focus, Secrets of Success, Concentration
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!
—Walter Scott
Topics: Patriotism
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: Law, Lawyers
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
Ridicule is the weapon most feared by enthusiasts of every description; from its predominance over such minds it often checks what is absurd, but fully as often smothers that which is noble.
—Walter Scott
The reason of the law is the law.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Law
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