Quotes by Sir Walter Scott
Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above him only by excelling him; so shall thy contest for superiority be crowned with honour, if not with success.
What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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.
The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.
Success - keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.
'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale; 'twas Christmas told the merriest tale; a Christmas gambol oft could cheer the poor man's heart through half the year.
To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
To all, to each, a fair good-night, And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.
A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.
He that climbs the tall tree has won right to the fruit, He that leaps the wide gulf should prevail in his suit.
One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.
If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.
To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.
Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
Vacant heart and hand and eye, Easy live and quiet die.
Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!
Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.
If you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life - if you cannot look back to those whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection, still it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty; for your active excretions are due not only to society; but in humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to save yourself and others.
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.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive
Oh, the tangled webs we weave When we practice to deceive.
