Izaak Walton

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.

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.

This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.

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 …

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.

No man can lose what he never had.

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.

An excellent angler, and now with God.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

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

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.

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

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.

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

It [angling] deserves commendations;… it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.

I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle.

As the Italians say, Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.

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.

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

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

Of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

God has two dwellings — one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.