Sir Walter Scott was the literary colossus of his age, famous first as a narrative poet and later as the author of the hugely successful Waverly Novels. Equally welcome in political and literary circles, he knew Wellington and George IV as well as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron. his Letters and Journal (from which the majority of these Sayings have been chosen) reveal a shrewd and kindly man whose creative energy was matched by massive common-sense.