Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Angling
A rod twelve feet long and a ring of wire,
A winder and barrel, will help thy desire
In killing a Pike; but the forked stick,
With a slit and a bladder,—and that other fine trick,
Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck,—
Will kill two for one, if you have any luck;
The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile,
To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile;
When a Pike suns himselfe and a-frogging doth go,
The two-inched hook is better, I know,
Than the ord’nary snaring: but still I must cry,
When the Pike is at home, minde the cookery.
Barker—The Art of Angling. (Reprint of 1820 of the 1657 edition).
For angling-rod he took a sturdy oak;
For line, a cable that in storm ne’er broke;
His hook was such as heads the end of pole
To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole;
This hook was bated with a dragon’s tail,—
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.
Sir William Davenant—Brittania Triumphans. P. 15. Variations of same in The Mock Romance, Hero and Leander. London, 1653, 1677. Chamber’s Book of Days. Vol. I. P. 173. Daniel—Rural Sports, Supplement. P. 57.
When if or chance or hunger’s powerful sway
Directs the roving trout this fatal way,
He greedily sucks in the twining bait,
And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat.
Gay—Rural Sports. Canto I. L. 150.
To fish in troubled waters.
Matthew Henry—Commentaries. Psalm LX.
You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum.
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?
Job. XLI. 1.
A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson, according to Hazlitt—Essay on Egotism. The Plain Speaker.
Fly fishing is a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing, I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Attributed to Johnson by Hawker—On Worm Fishing. (Not found in his works.) See Notes and Queries, Dec. 11, 1915.
La ligne, avec sa canne, est un long instrument,
Dont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile,
Et dont l’autre est tenu par un grand imbecile.
A French version of lines attributed to Johnson; claimed for Guyet, who lived about 100 years earlier.
His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
His line, a cable which in storms ne’er broke;
His hook he baited with a dragon’s tail,—
And sat upon a rock, and bobb’d for whale.
William King—Upon a Giant’s Angling. (In Chalmers’s British Poets.)
Down and back at day dawn,
Tramp from lake to lake,
Washing brain and heart clean
Every step we take.
Leave to Robert Browning
Beggars, fleas, and vines;
Leave to mournful Ruskin
Popish Apennines,
Dirty stones of Venice,
And his gas lamps seven,
We’ve the stones of Snowdon
And the lamps of heaven.
Charles Kingsley—Letters and Memories, Aug., 1856. (Edited by Mrs. Kingsley.)
In a bowl to sea went wise men three,
On a brilliant night in June:
They carried a net, and their hearts were set
On fishing up the moon.
Thomas Love Peacock—The Wise Men of Gotham. Paper Money Lyrics. St. 1.
In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade,
Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov’d, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
Pope—Windsor Forest. L. 135.
Give me mine angle, we’ll to the river; there,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
Their slimy jaws.
Antony and Cleopatra. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 10.
The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 26.
Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle
Such are the sea-fruits lasses love:
Ho! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle,
And the shutterless cottages gleam above!
Bayard Taylor—The Shrimp-Gatherers. (Parody of Jean Ingelow.)
But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the Monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Thomson—The Seasons. Spring. L. 420.
Two honest and good-natured anglers have never met each other by the way without crying out, “What luck?”
Henry Van Dyke—Fisher’s Luck.
’Tis an affair of luck.
Henry Van Dyke—Fisher’s Luck.
Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Author’s Preface.
As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Author’s Preface.
I shall stay him no longer than to wish***that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a fishing.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Author’s Preface.
Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. I.
Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. I.
I am, Sir, a brother of the angle.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. I.
It [angling] deserves commendations;***it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. I.
An excellent angler, and now with God.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. IV.
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.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. V. (Boteler was Dr. Wm. Butler. See Fuller’s—Worthies. Also Roger Williams—Key into the Language of America. P. 98.)
Thus use your frog:***put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sow 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.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. VIII.
O! the gallant fisher’s life,
It is the best of any:
’Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,
And ’tis beloved by many.
Other joys
Are but toys;
Only this,
Lawful is:
For our skill
Breeds no ill,
But content and pleasure.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Ch. XVI.
And upon all that are lovers of virtue; and dare trust in his providence; and be quiet; and go a-angling.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. Pt. I. Ch. XXI.
Of recreation there is none
So free as fishing is, alone;
All other pastimes do not less
Than mind and body, both possess:
My hand alone my work can do;
So I can fish and study too.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. The Angler’s Song.
The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon Him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that He on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those,
Whom He to follow Him hath chose.
Izaak Walton—The Compleat Angler. The Angler’s Song.