If possible I would like the origin of this quote, and any more of it you may know.?

Question

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive."

Answer 1

Sir Walter Scott wrote it in a "Marmion" canto vi. stanza 17:
http://www.geocities.com/poeminister/canto6.htm

Answer 2

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
Scottish author & novelist (1771 - 1832)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.
Laurence J. Peter, paraphrasing Sir Walter Scott
US educator & writer (1919 - 1988) ; author of "The Peter Principle"

For all your quotation needs - type 'Quotations page' into your web search and voila!!!

Answer 3

I lived with this quote for many and many a year, I hear my Mother saying it. and think I have lived my life remembering it!!! And I am 73!!! But here is the poem and thank you, I only knew the quote and now because of you I now know the whole poem. So Thank you and a Happy New Year..

Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.
The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,
Seemed forms of giant height:
Their armour, as it caught the rays,
Flashed back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light.

V. (Canto Second 87-98)

Nought say I here of Sister Clare,
Save this, that she was young and fair;
As yet a novice unprofessed,
Lovely and gentle, but distressed.
She was betrothed to one now dead,
Or worse, who had dishonoured fled.
Her kinsmen bid her give her hand
To one who loved her for her land:
Herself, almost heart-broken now,
Was bent to take the vestal vow,
And shroud within Saint Hilda's gloom,
Her blasted hopes and withered bloom.

VII. (Canto Second 113-127)

Lovely, and gentle, and distressed-
These charms might tame the fiercest breast.
Harpers have sung, and poets told,
That he, in fury uncontrolled,
The shaggy monarch of the wood,
Before a virgin, fair and good,
Hath pacified his savage mood.
But passions in the human frame,
Oft put the lion's rage to shame:
And jealousy, by dark intrigue,
With sordid avarice in league,
Had practiced with their bowl and knife
Against the mourner's harmless life.
This crime was charged 'gainst those who lay
Prisoned in Cuthbert's islet grey.[1]

XVI. (Canto Fifth 463-475)

And while the king his hand did strain,
The old man's tears fell down like rain.
To seize the moment Marmion tried,
And whispered to the king aside:
"Oh, let such tears unwonted plead
For respite short from dubious deed!
A child will weep a bramble's smart,
A maid to see her sparrow part,
A stripling for a woman's heart:
But woe awaits a country when
She sees the tears of bearded men.
Then, oh! what omen dark and high,
When Douglas wets his manly eye!"

And for those bits that Pelham Grenville pinched and had Bertie Wooster (or
Jeeves) mouth :

XVIII. (Canto Sixth 532-537)

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
A Palmer [2] too! - no wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye:
I might have known there was but one,
Whose look could quell Lord Marmion."

XXX (Canto Sixth 902-907)

[3] O, woman in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

-- Sir Walter Scott

Answer 4

It's a quote from Sir Walter Scott.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Walter_Scott/

Answer 5

it's by sir walter scott


Marmion. Canto vi. Stanza 17.

Answer 6

Its a quote from Sir Walter Scott - a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet.

The Quote was from the poem "Marmion" (Canto vi. Stanza 17), for a full copy of the poem, check out here - there is also some information and analysis of the poem:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/495.html

For more information about him, check out these sources:
http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Walter_Scott
http://www.online-literature.com/walter_scott/

More (alot more!) of his quotes can be found here:
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sir_walter_scott
and here:
http://www.bartleby.com/100/338.html
and here:
http://www.online-literature.com/walter_scott/

One of his I like:
“Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears”

Answer 7

Sir Walter Scott

And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but death who comes at last.
Sir Walter Scott 1808

Answer 8

shakespear