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
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, Service, Assistance, Aid, Humanity, Help, Giving
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
A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.
—Walter Scott
Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Tears
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Wine
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
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Literature
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Education
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
Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than the habit of drinking.
—Walter Scott
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Charm, Face, Faces
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Cats
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
Better that they had ne’er been born who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
—Walter Scott
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 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
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, Concentration, Focus
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: Time Management, Value of a Day, Teamwork
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
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Selfishness
No scene of life but teems with mortal woe.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Misery
Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Business, Attitude, Failure
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Age, Life and Living
O woman! in our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please, and variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made; when pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Woman
Come he slow or come he fast. It is but death who comes at last.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Death, Dying
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Honesty, Deceit
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
When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Loneliness
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
But with morning cool repentance came.
—Walter Scott
Topics: Forgiveness, Repentance
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