Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 4

I sometimes think that normal, everyday life is only a delusion. We walk on a think crust of earth which we call peace; and every now and again we can hear a rumble below our feet; and sometimes the crust splits and we see that, underneath there is a glowing inferno ready to erupt. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it is always there.
Helen MacInnes
We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.
Sara Sheridan
People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like, `What? You`re married?` Strange reaction to have. Proves what people`s ideas about marriage are. `We`re having a baby.` `What?` As if it`s the end of the world. Of course, it`s the start of a brilliant world.
Ewan McGregor
The setting sunWith yellow radiance lighten'd all the vale;And as the warriors moved, each polish'd helm,Corslet or spear, glanced back his gilded beams.The hill they climbed, and halting at its top,Of more than mortal size, towering, they seem'dA host angelic, clad in burning arms.
John Home
Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come that we may be brave in peril constant in tribulation temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death loyal and loving one to anther.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Life is worth living and no matter what it throws at you it is important to keep your eyes on the prize of the happiness that will come. Even when the Death Railway reduced us to little more than animals, humanity in the shape of our saintly medical officers triumphed over barbarism.Remember, while it always seems darkest before the dawn, perseverance pays off and the good times will return.
Alistair Urquhart
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
John Muir
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation.
Adam Smith
To see what God is like, we must look at Jesus. He perfectly represents God to men in a form which they can see and know and understand.
William Barclay
I love zombies. If any monster could Riverdance, it would be zombies.
Craig Ferguson
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
John Muir
He was a bad, bad bastard. He abused the privilege of being a cunt, as my old Da would say.’ I smiled, picturing the cozy fireside scene of young son on father’s knee being inducted into the world of abusive epithets.
Craig Russell
All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself.
Iain M. Banks
In moments of peace such as I experienced that day with Edal there exists some unritual reunion with the rest of creation without which the lives of many are trivial. 'Extinct' applies as much to an essential mental attitude as to the vanished creatures of the earth such as the Dodo. We can no longer await some scientific revelation to avoid the destruction of our species in this context; the evidence is all there, the writing on the wall. The way back cannot be the same for all of us, but for those like myself it means a descent of the rungs until we stand again amid the other creatures of the earth and share to some small extent their vision of it, even though this may be labelled Wordsworthian romanticism.
Gavin Maxwell
When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is. Why would you keep looking after you've found it?
Billy Connolly
It was the soul of the machine, the ethological epicentre, the planetary ground zero of their commercial energy. I could almost feel it, shivering down like bomb-blasted rivers of glass from these undreaming towers of dark and light invading the snow-dark sky.
Iain M. Banks
I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
Sara Sheridan
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.
John Muir
He who indulges habitually in the intoxicating pleasures of imagination, for the very reason that he reaps a greater pleasure than others, must resign himself to a keener pain, a more intolerable and utter prostration.
Robert Louis Stevenson
O, wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as others see us!It wad frae monie a blunder free us,An' foolish notion.
Robert Burns
The Clowns were Hungry. They did not want to wait to be fed. But when they sated there hunger, they wanted it to be in the right way, for the right reasons. They could wait . The Grace Keepers
Kristy Logan
The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I'm very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.
Sara Sheridan
Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n аw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.
Irvine Welsh
Epicurus's old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?
David Hume
From this moment on I'd dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible. What could possibly go wrong?
Craig Ferguson
When you need to borrow money the Mob seems like a better deal I think. 'You don't pay me back I break both yer legs.' Is that all? You won't take my house or wreck my credit rating? Fine where do I sign. Legs? Fine. You don't even have to sign anything.
Craig Ferguson
This is a sane wholesome practical working faith: That it is a man's business to do the will of God second that God himself takes on the care of that man and third that therefore that man ought never to be afraid of anything.
George MacDonald
Son, it’s easy tae be guid oan a fu’ belly. It’s when a man’s goat two bites an’ wan o’ them he’ll share, ye ken whit he’s made o’. Listen. In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it’s like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattom. The rest can a’ kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas. We canny, son. We loass the wan idea o’ who we are, we’re deid. We’re wan anither. Tae survive, we’ll respect wan anither. When the time comes, we’ll a’ move forward thegither, or nut at all.
William McIlvanney
Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.
Sara Sheridan
It 's the time of year when Canadians mate.
Craig Ferguson
It’s not until you’re older that you realise how important the things that happened to you when you were a kid are. Even things you only half remember.
Sara Sheridan
The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
Sara Sheridan
Knowing another is endless...The thing to be known grows with the knowing.
Nan Shepherd
Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.
Alasdair Gray
All children think unkindly of their parents at some time or another
Kenneth MacKenzie
All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely.
Alasdair MacIntyre
The essence of love is kindness.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Above all am I convinced of the need irrevocable and inescapable of every human heart for God. No matter how we try to escape to lose ourselves in restless seeking we cannot separate ourselves from our divine source. There is no substitute for God.
A.J. Cronin
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zoneAnd the recoil of my word's airy rippleMy heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
George MacDonald
God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.
Oswald Chambers
I dinnae get people, like they all want to be watched, to be seen, like all the time. They put up their pictures online and let people they dinnae like look at them! And people they’ve never met as well, and they all pretend tae be shinier than they are – and some are even posting on like four sites; their bosses are watching them at work, the cameras watch them on the bus, and on the train, and in Boots, and even outside the chip shop. Then even at home – they’re going online to look and see who they can watch, and to check who’s watching them!
Jenni Fagan
I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.
Sara Sheridan
The smell of tobacco usually reminded Mirabelle of being a child – coming downstairs in the morning when the dinner party her parents had hosted the night before was cleared away, but the scent of cigars still lingered.
Sara Sheridan
There are as many kinds of anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end
George MacDonald
Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.
Thomas Carlyle
Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.
Sara Sheridan
How kind you are, North Wind!''I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.
George MacDonald
Instinct is untaught ability.
Alexander Bain
To see her is to love her And love but her forever For Nature made her what she is And never made another.
Robert Burns
War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.
Aminatta Forna
Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.
Samuel Smiles
Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.
Sara Sheridan
I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.
Sara Sheridan
That is life... to begin again when everything is lost!
A.J. Cronin
Because, George thought as she sat there with her eyes closed back before Christmas in Mrs Rock's self-consciously comfortable chair in the counselling office, how can it be that there's an advert on TV with dancing bananas unpeeling themselves in it and teabags doing a dance, and her mother will never see that advert? How can that advert exist and her mother not exist in the world?She didn't say it out loud, though, because there wasn't a point.It isn't about saying.It is about the hole which will form in the roof through which the cold will intensify and after which the structure of the house will begin to shift, like it ought, and through which George will be able to lie every night in bed watching the black sky.
Ali Smith
To My MotherYou too, my mother, read my rhymesFor love of unforgotten times,And you may chance to hear once moreThe little feet along the floor.
Robert Louis Stevenson
And after that, I watched our house collapse in on itself and I spent some time lying in the rubble. Then I vanished completely. I wasn't here at all. Then you phoned.
Ali Smith
The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public
Adam Smith