Walter Scott Quotes

“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, unhonored, and unsung.”
― Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805

“Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. — It is not fair. — He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths. — I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it — but fear I must.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“Albert Graeme

It was an English ladye bright,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall)
And she would marry a Scottish knight,
For Love will still be lord of all.

Blithely they saw the rising sun
When he shone fair on Carlisle wall;
But they were sad ere day was done,
Though Love was still the lord of all.

Her sire gave brooch and jewel fine,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall;
Her brother gave but a flask of wine,
For ire that Love was lord of all.

For she had lands both meadow and lea,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,
For he swore her death, ere he would see
A Scottish knight the lord of all.

That wine she had not tasted well
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall)
When dead, in her true love's arms, she fell,
For Love was still the lord of all!

He pierced her brother to the heart,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,
So perish all would true love part
That Love may still be lord of all!

And then he took the cross divine,
Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,
And died for her sake in Palestine;
So Love was still the lord of all.

Now all ye lovers, that faithful prove,
(The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall)
Pray for their souls who died for love,
For Love shall still be lord of all!

-- Canto 6”
― Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805

“Scott calls Bois-Guilbert 'an unprincipled voluptuary,' which is hard to improve on.”
― Richard Armour, The Classics Reclassified

“...the prose tradition had died two centuries before and the recreation of a full canon of all-purpose Scots was beyond even Scott's skill, nor did he attempt it, except, perhaps in the magnificent Wandering Willie's Tale. He took the only course open to him, of writing his narrative in English and using Scots only for those who, given their social class, would still be speaking it: daft Davie Gellatley in Waverley, the gypsies and Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mannering, the Headriggs in Old Mortality, Edie Ochiltree and the fisher-folk of Musselcrag in The Antiquary, Andrew Fairservice in Rob Roy, the Deanses in The Heart of Midlothian, Meg Dods in St. Ronan's Well, and so on.

The procedure gave reality to the Scots characters whose ways and ethos it was Scott's main purpose to portray, and the author in his best English, which lumbered along rather badly at times, did little more than lay out the setting for the action and act as impressario for the characters as they played their roles...

...Scott's felicity in conveying character and action through their Scots speech inspired his imitators for the next hundred years - Susan Ferrier, Hogg, Macdonald, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Alexander, George Douglas, and John Buchan. The tradition of narrative in standard English and dialogue in various degrees of dialect has been the usual procedure since.”
― David Murison, Grampian Hairst: An Anthology of Northeast Prose

“Scott and Terry created a political theatre in which a Hanovarian English monarch could appear on the stage of Edinburgh to act the part of a Stuart king.”
― Cairns Craig, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence

“Literary subjects as a whole enjoyed a great popularity at the Salon of 1839. France had a passionate addiction throughout the twenties and thirties to English literature, English history, and Goethe. This addiction is seen, for instance, in the extraordinary popularity of the historical novels of Walter Scott. Their pages held not only events and figures of profound interest to a history-curious society, but also a wealth of descriptive detail about the material side of life in other times: what people did, what their homes were like, how they spoke, how they dressed, what they fought about, what they believed in, and—most entertaining—whom they loved. These accounts, told by a fictional observer of the lower class, found universal favor. The educated admired Scott’s erudition, while all social strata loved his use of local color, description, and melodramatic anecdotes.

Scott’s historical novel, by format and methods, is the primary literary source of the genre historique in history painting. Both were equally popular in the arts. Both directly reflect bourgeois tastes and were dependent for their proliferation on a new literate, commercial society. By the early thirties, the Scott repertoire was so well known that a Salon audience would have found the stories recognizable without a catalog entry.”
― Patricia Condon, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848

“Scott saw its ludicrous proportions; and it is likely that posterity will remember the Pictish question in the discussion between Monkbarns and Sir Arthur Wardour after the volumes of Whitaker, Goodall, Pinkerton, Chalmers, Ritter, and Grant have been long entombed in their proper shelves.”
― John Hill Burton, The History Of Scotland From Agricola's Invasion To The Extinction Of The Last Jacobite Insurrection, Volume 1

“Oh Tillietudlem, no matter whaur I be,
Tillietudlem Castle 'll aye be dear tae me.
T'was there I met my Mary when first I went to see
Tillietudlem Castle and its bonny scenery.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“The gallery context of Scotch Myths puts the objects on display in an interrogatory framework in a way that their presence in souvenir shops does not. Similarly, the exhibition catalogue explicitly poses the correct questions and reinserts the objects into a history spanning the mid-eighteenth century to the present day: James Macpherson (1736-96), Ossianism; European Romanticism; Walter Scott (1771-1832), the appropriation of Scott and Scotland by Europe and America; the internal reappropriation by Scotland itself of earlier external appropriations, via the emergence of Kailyard; Scottish militarism in the context of nineteenth-century colonial wars, both World Wars and beyond; the dissemination of the ensemble of images and categories of thought within successive practices and technologies - literature, lithography, photography, the postcard, the music hall, films, television. It is one thing to see the imagery of Tartanry/Kailyard in its so-called natural habitats of the souvenir shop or the wall of a Scottish home; it is quite another thing to see it reproduced on orange crates from California.”
― Colin McArthur, Cencrastus No. 7: Winter 1981-82