A biography for Walter Scotthasn’t been written yet.
“Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.”
“When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.”
“And please return it. You may think this a strange request, but I find that although my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all of them good bookkeepers.”
“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”
“Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.”
“Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness.”
“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.”
“I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!”
“To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.”
“Colonel Talbot? he is a very disagreeable person, to be sure. He looks as if he thought no Scottish woman worth the trouble of handing her a cup of tea.”
“Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.”
“If you once turn on your side after the hour at which you ought to rise, it is all over. Bolt up at once.”