Izaak Walton

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• But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own.
  • Life of Donne (1640)

• The great secretary of Nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon.
  • Life of Herbert (1670)

The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

• I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.
  • Epistle to the Reader

• Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.
  • Epistle to the Reader

• As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.
  • Epistle to the Reader

• I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.
  • Epistle to the Reader

• Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice
  • Part I, ch. 1

• Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
  • Part I, ch. 1

• Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration.
  • Part I, ch. 1

• You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.
  • Part I, ch. 1

• I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."
  • Part I, ch. 2

• Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
  • Part I, ch. 2

• I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.
  • Part I, ch. 5

• No man can lose what he never had.
  • Part I, ch. 5

• We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
  • Part I, ch. 5

• Thus use your frog...Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;...and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.
  • Part I, ch. 8

• This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.
  • Part I, ch. 8

• Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.
  • Part I, ch. 21

• Let the blessing of St. Peter's Master be...upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his Providence, and be quiet and go a-angling.
  • Part I, ch. 21