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.
Walter Scott
Born: August 15, 1771 Died: September 21, 1832
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (August 15, 1771 – September 21, 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright and historian popular throughout Europe during his time. He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment, active in the Highland Society, long a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre and as an exemplar of European Romanticism.
Biographical information from: Wikiquote
Alternative Names for Walter Scott
Formal name - Full ceremonial or official name including titles and honorifics:
- Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (English (en))
The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.
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I see a hand you cannot see, Which beckons me away; I hear a voice you cannot hear, Which says I must not stay. MALLET.
Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates.
No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.
How nearly can what we most despise and hate, approach in outward manner to that which we most venerate!
There are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or became abortive through opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a tale of true love.
...[G]old is their god, and for riches will they pawn their lives as well as their lands.
There is no better antidote against entertaining too high an opinion of others than having an excellent one of ourselves at the very same time.
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.
In the wide pile, by others heeded not,
Hers was one sacred solitary spot,
Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain
For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.
One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name
But the whole circumstances of time, place, and incident, combined at once to awaken his imagination, and to call upon him for a manly and decisive tone of conduct, leaving to fate to dispose of the issue.
Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much of Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other trifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium.
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.