Walter Scott

The criminals came in so fast that they were fain to execute them first and afterwards try them at leisure.

“That sounds like nonsense, my dear.”

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.

Your Lordship will probably recollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words “And this also shall pass away.”

And dar’st thou, then,

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed;

O! many a shaft, at random sent / Finds mark the archer little meant!

Ne’er / Was flattery lost on poet’s ear; / A simple race! they waste their toil / For the vain tribute of a smile.

True love’s the gift which God has given / To man alone beneath the heaven.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, / And men below, and saints above; / For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land! *

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

Too much rest is rust.

He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit.

Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger; but in being prompt to confront and disarm it.

This was really a compliment to be pleased with— a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a neat-handed . . . dairy-maid instead of the grease fit only for cartwheels which one is dosed with by the pound.

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.

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.

The Big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.

The play-bill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.

There’s a gude time coming.

The hour is come, but not the man.

‘but’ = without

It’s no fish ye’re buying—it’s men’s lives.

Touch not the cat but a glove.

O what a tangled web we weave,

O Woman! in our hours of ease,

O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

O! many a shaft, at random sent,

And come he slow, or come he fast,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,