Sir Walter Scott

Adversity is like the period of the rain ... cold comfortless unfriendly to man and to animal yet from that season have their birth the flower the fruit the date the rose and the pomegranate.

True love's the gift which God has given To man alone beneath the heaven: It is not fantasy's hot fire Whose wishes soon as granted fly It liveth not in fierce desire.

One hour of life crowded to the full with glorious action and filled with noble risks is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum.

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

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 man and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. But the first broadside puts all to rights.

I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right but when I am a little in the wrong.

The chain of friendship however bright does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.

To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.

It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.

Adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer.

But search the land of living men Where wilt thou find their like again.

...[E]xcept the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an intermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury... Yet the passive courage inspired by the love of gain induced the Jews to dare the various evils to which they were subjected, in consideration of the immense profits which they were enabled to realise in a country naturally so wealthy as England. In spite of every kind of discouragement, and even of the special court of taxations already mentioned, called the Jews' Exchequer, erected for the very purpose of despoiling and distressing them, the Jews increased, multiplied, and accumulated huge sums, which they transferred from one hand to another by means of bills of exchange-an invention for which commerce is said to be indebted to them, and which enabled them to transfer their wealth from land to land, that, when threatened with oppression in one country, their treasure might be secured in another. The obstinacy and avarice of the Jews being thus in a measure placed in opposition to the fanaticism and tyranny of those under whom they lived, seemed to increase in proportion to the persecution with which they were visited...