What isscience? Science is angling in the mudöangling for immortalityand for anything elsethat may happen to turn up.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
  After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I canonlycomparetoa stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
Quoted in Hawker Instructions toYoung Sportsmen (1859). The attribution is doubtful, and Swift has also been credited with the remark.

Angling may be saidtobe so likemathematics, that itcan never be fully learnt.

-Walton, Izaak
  The Compleat Angler,'Epistle to the Reader'.

Angling issomewhat like poetry, men areto be bornso: I mean with inclination to it.

-Walton, Izaak
  The Compleat Angler, pt.1, ch.1.

Sir Henry Wotton†was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser of the art of angling; of which he would say,'it was anemployment forhisidletime†a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness; and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.'

-Walton, Izaak
  The Compleat Angler, pt.1, ch.1.