Izaak Walton Biography Quotes 14 Report mistakes

Early Life
Izaak Walton was born around 1593 in Stafford, England, and lived to an exceptional age, dying around 1683. He came from modest circumstances and did not pass through the universities, but he showed early an aptitude for steady work and a bent for reading and pious reflection. In his youth he moved to London, where the pull of trade, parish life, and the literary world drew him into a city that would shape both his career and his friendships.

London, Trade, and a Circle of Devotion
In London Walton established himself as a shopkeeper along Fleet Street, within the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West. That parish linked him to John Donne, who served there before becoming Dean of St Paul's. The connection mattered: Donne's sermons and poetry, and the atmosphere of serious, humane devotion around him, left a deep mark on Walton. Through the city's sociable thoroughfares and religious households he also came to know figures such as Sir Henry Wotton and George Herbert, and he cultivated a reverence for Richard Hooker, the great theologian of an earlier generation. Walton participated actively in parish life and gathered the letters, anecdotes, and recollections that would later feed his biographical writing. He married and raised a family; by his second marriage he became connected to the household of Thomas Ken, who would later become a bishop and a notable devotional writer, and who remained an affectionate presence in Walton's later life.

Retreats, Rivers, and the Civil War
The English Civil War unsettled London and, like many of his contemporaries, Walton's life moved into quieter channels beyond the city. He spent more time in the countryside, especially in Staffordshire and along the borderlands where the River Dove winds through pastoral valleys. There he cultivated a lasting friendship with Charles Cotton, a younger country gentleman and angler. The two shared long days of fishing and conversation that taught Walton to distill practical craft into reflective prose. Cotton later celebrated their fraternity by building a small riverside house dedicated to anglers, and he would play a decisive role in the expansion of Walton's most famous book.

The Compleat Angler
In 1653 Walton published The Compleat Angler, a work that has rarely been out of print since. The book is cast as a series of dialogues among companions identified as Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, who wander riversides discussing angling, natural history, and the moral uses of recreation. It gathers practical advice for the beginner and seasoned fisher alike, and interweaves songs, poems, proverbs, and stories with Scripture and the lore of the countryside. Walton steadily enlarged and revised the book across subsequent editions. In 1676 the most influential enlargement appeared: Charles Cotton contributed a substantial second part focusing on fly-fishing, and from that time forward "Walton and Cotton" became a paired name in the literature of sport. The Angler's lasting appeal lies not only in its instruction but in its tone: a companionable, unhurried invitation to "study to be quiet", as Walton liked to say, and to find in fields and streams a school for patience, gratitude, and peace.

Walton's Lives
Walton was also a pioneering biographer. Over several decades he composed affectionate, carefully assembled short lives of men he admired and, in many cases, knew personally. The Life of Dr. John Donne presented the poet-preacher as a model of eloquence and penitence. The Life of Sir Henry Wotton traced the diplomat-scholar's urbane wit and Christian composure. The Life of Mr. Richard Hooker honored the great Anglican divine and set his theological calm against the storms of controversy. The Life of Mr. George Herbert memorialized the poet-priest's holiness and art. The Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson portrayed the learned casuist and bishop as a figure of pastoral prudence. These Lives, often printed with letters, verses, and portraits, offered edifying examples rather than argumentative critique. They helped define the memory of English churchmanship in the seventeenth century by mingling personal testimony, documentary care, and Walton's characteristic mildness of judgment.

Friends, Patrons, and Later Work
Walton moved easily among scholars, clergy, and country gentlemen who shared his love of books and rivers. He drew strength from friendships with figures such as George Morley, who became Bishop of Winchester, and he benefited from a broad network that opened libraries, private papers, and quiet refuges for writing. In old age he continued to edit and introduce works that fit his taste for pastoral and devotional literature; shortly before his death he brought to press Thealma and Clearchus, a pastoral poem attributed to John Chalkhill, prefaced with his own remarks. He kept in close touch with Charles Cotton, with the families of his children, and with Thomas Ken, whose hymns and sermons embodied a piety akin to Walton's own.

Later Years and Death
After the Restoration, Walton divided his time between literary labors, family, and visits to the rivers he loved. Age did not blunt his pen; he revised his works, corresponded about sources for his Lives, and accepted the honors of affectionate readers without display. He spent his final years among kin in Winchester, within sight of the cathedral and under the pastoral eye of friends in the diocese. He died there in 1683, approaching ninety years of age, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where his grave keeps company with the devotional memory he helped to shape.

Character and Legacy
Walton's prose is notable for plainness joined to quiet musicality, for observation informed by gratitude, and for a biographer's tact grounded in personal acquaintance. His masterpiece remains The Compleat Angler, a book that created, almost single-handedly, the literature of fishing in English and set a standard for writing about rural life and recreation. His Lives established a mode of spiritual portraiture that prized charity over controversy and made enduring public images of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. The friendships that sustained him, especially with Charles Cotton, John Donne, and Thomas Ken, threaded his life with the companionship he celebrated in his pages. To read Walton is to encounter a seventeenth-century Englishman whose fidelity to friends, love of Anglican devotion, and affection for the fields and streams of his country are inseparable from his art.

Our collection contains 14 quotes who is written by Izaak, under the main topics: Wisdom - Friendship - Learning - Nature - Honesty & Integrity.