Re: what are your favourite fishing quotes?
Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 9:12 am
This just made my gloomy-grey morning all shiny:
"Upon the merits and delights of angling I need scarcely descant.
Every angler knows that his feet are never put to the ground with
such alacrity and right good-will, as when
tramping to the river — rod in hand — full of
hope and expectation, on a fine April morning.
Serenely happy, he then proclaims a universal
amnesty to every created being (except an
opposition angler), and feeling internally at
peace with himself, the world, and all mankind,
every object that meets his view seems
to wear the same sunny smile that gilds his
own happy reflections. Would that all our
dealings and pursuits in the ordinary avocations
of daily life were productive of such
blessed results!"
"But woe to you who dwell in pent-up
cities! A chaos of bricks and smoke, and
- fumes of every unsavoury odour, constitute
your dreary world. To you, ever surrounded
by the cares of life, and perpetually bored
to desperation by that demon, whose imps are
£. s. D., in an everlasting and ceaseless contest;
the glorious works of the Creator's hands — green
hills and sunny fields — are scarcely known;
to you, a mouthful of fresh air, and a glimpse of
rural scenes, must be a treat indeed! Rise
then, gird on your mantle, and follow me, at
least in imagination, and I will initiate you
into the mysteries of the "gentle art", giving
you such a taste of rural entertainment as shall
render the country for ever dear to your recollection;
and the squalid haunts of vice, pestilence,
and immorality, hideous and detestable."
(in the preface by A. S. MOFFAT to "THE SECRETS OF ANGLING", Edinburgh, 1865)
"Upon the merits and delights of angling I need scarcely descant.
Every angler knows that his feet are never put to the ground with
such alacrity and right good-will, as when
tramping to the river — rod in hand — full of
hope and expectation, on a fine April morning.
Serenely happy, he then proclaims a universal
amnesty to every created being (except an
opposition angler), and feeling internally at
peace with himself, the world, and all mankind,
every object that meets his view seems
to wear the same sunny smile that gilds his
own happy reflections. Would that all our
dealings and pursuits in the ordinary avocations
of daily life were productive of such
blessed results!"
"But woe to you who dwell in pent-up
cities! A chaos of bricks and smoke, and
- fumes of every unsavoury odour, constitute
your dreary world. To you, ever surrounded
by the cares of life, and perpetually bored
to desperation by that demon, whose imps are
£. s. D., in an everlasting and ceaseless contest;
the glorious works of the Creator's hands — green
hills and sunny fields — are scarcely known;
to you, a mouthful of fresh air, and a glimpse of
rural scenes, must be a treat indeed! Rise
then, gird on your mantle, and follow me, at
least in imagination, and I will initiate you
into the mysteries of the "gentle art", giving
you such a taste of rural entertainment as shall
render the country for ever dear to your recollection;
and the squalid haunts of vice, pestilence,
and immorality, hideous and detestable."
(in the preface by A. S. MOFFAT to "THE SECRETS OF ANGLING", Edinburgh, 1865)
