Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683)
English writer, author of The Compleat Angler.
God has two dwellings — one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.
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.
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.
I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.
Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.
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.
Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration.
Oh, the gallant fisher's life!
It is the best of any;
'T is full of pleasure, void of strife,
And 't is beloved by many.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.
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.
Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."
As the Italians say, Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.
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.
But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit.
I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.
I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle.
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.
An excellent angler, and now with God.