Favorite quotes from Walter Scott's The Monastery

[cimorene]

• “[Y]ou twa will be as thick as three in a bed an ance ye forgather.” [You two will be as thick as three in a bed once you get together.]



• “Then the gentleman is a scholar, David?”
  
  “I'se uphaud him a scholar,” answered David: “he has a black coat on, or a brown ane, at ony-rate.” [I'd bet he's a scholar; he has a black coat on, or a brown one, at any rate.]
  
  “Is he a clergyman?”
  
  “I am thinking no, for he looked after his horse's supper before he spoke o' his ain,” replied mine host.



• “I wish him no worse lesson,” said the Sacristan, “than to go swimming merrily down the river with a ghost behind, and Kelpies, night-crows, and mud-eels, all waiting to have a snatch at him."



• The Scottish laws, which were as wisely and judiciously made as they were carelessly and ineffectually executed,



• “Alas! sir,” answered Dame Elspeth, “he is but too prompt, an you talk of promptitude, at any thing that has steel at one end of it, and mischief at the other.”



• "He is a considerate lord the Lord Abbot.”
  
  “And weel he likes a saft seat to his hinder end,” said Tibb; “I have seen a belted baron sit on a bare bench, and find nae fault." [And well he likes a soft seat for his hind end.]



• “And would he fight with Foster in the Church's quarrel?”
  
  “On any quarrel, or upon no quarrel whatever."