"Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish."

Walter Scott Literature See all quotes by Walter Scott →

React to this quote

More by Walter Scott

“Scared out of his seven senses.”

“Still are the thoughts to memory dear.”

“The stores of history are accessible to every one, and are no more exhausted or impoverished by the hints thus borrowed from them than the fountain is drained by the water which we subtract for domestic purposes. And in reply to the sober charge of falsehood against a narrative announced positively to be fictitious, one can only answer by Prior's exclamation - 'Odzooks, must one swear to the truth of a song?'”

“But with the morning cool reflection came.”

“There is a southern proverb—fine words butter no parsnips.”

“Lambe them, lads! lambe them!" a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time.”

Resonant Thoughts

"We do not live that we may become more godlike. We become more godlike that we may live. We turn to the future to live in the present. The practices by which we invent different futures bring down upo…"

— Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Philosophy1947

#death

"All Marie was earth before it became marle, it is a kinde of clay ground, and chalke it selfe was marle before it became chalke. And that which is more, that which is yet chalke within the Matrix of t…"

— Hugh Plat

Technology1552–1608

#wisdom

"It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre 'kick', Here is the material for a really profound study in group neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence …"

— H. P. Lovecraft

Literature1890–1937

#music

"Every libel, which is called famosus libellus, is made either against a private man, or against a public person. If it be against a private man, it deserves a severe punishment."

— Edward Coke

Law

#family