“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, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.”
Countess Brenhilda in Count Robert of Paris (1832), Ch. 25.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Walter Scott 151
Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet 1771–1832Related quotes

The Sound of Thunder (1957) Pt. I, Ch. 9
1950s
Context: Learning … should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail. So its surroundings should be as gracious as possible, to complement it.

“You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.”

“The observer of nature see, with admiration, that "the whole world is full of the glory of God."”
Lachesis Lapponica: Or, A Tour in Laplan http://books.google.es/books?id=vQ5XAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false (1811), translated by James Edward Smith, Lulea, p. 238.

"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: When we survey our lives and endeavors we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires are bound up with the existence of other human beings. We see that our whole nature resembles that of the social animals. We eat food that others have grown, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through the medium of a language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities would be poor indeed, comparable to those of the higher animals; we have, therefore, to admit that we owe our principal advantage over the beasts to the fact of living in human society. The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)