There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838.
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Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time.
Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838.
To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents,—the tools to him that can handle them.[579:1]
Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838.
Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!
Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838.
The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.