Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 8

The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.
Irvine Welsh
Google maps are one thing but there's no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder - I'd been hanging around staring at the exterior of his flat for too long.
Sara Sheridan
Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them.
Hugh Miller
We have to accept that any action we take might promote an equal and opposite reaction that we do not want. We have to realize that even the most noble actions or most obviously correct course can have its dark side that we cannot control or reason our way out of. The fighter of the "just war" must understand that her actions will result in the deaths of other humans; many of whom may be innocent. The pacifist who refuses all war must realize that his inaction might likewise result in the deaths of the innocent. There are no actions without contradiction—and yet we must act, for not to act is also a contradictory action with both positive and negative effects.
John Hunter
Perhaps we’re back at the frontiers only of science here, and there’s nothing supernatural about it – just the emergence, through a thinning divide, of physical space shared with all that’s thought dead and lost.
Andrea Gillies
An important part of deciding where we want to go, as a society and culture, is knowing where we have come from, and indeed, how far we have come.
Sara Sheridan
Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?
Robert Louis Stevenson
I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.
Irvine Welsh
Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche's thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right.
Alasdair MacIntyre
Self-preservation is not a man’s first duty: flight is his last. Better and wiser and infinitely nobler to stand a mark for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and to stop at our post though we fall there, better infinitely to toil on, even when toil seems vain, than cowardly to keep a whole skin at the cost of a wounded conscience or despairingly to fling up work, because the ground is hard and the growth of the seed imperceptible. Prudent advices, when the prudence is only inspired by sense, are generally foolish.
Alexander MacLaren
I wondered if that was what I was doing myself – caring so much about something that was so long gone that I was only propping it up.
Sara Sheridan
We shall all respect the principle of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as an act oppression to any portion of the people
Alexander Mackenzie
The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.
Thomas Carlyle
You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.
Sara Sheridan
One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.
Iain M. Banks
I stood staring to heaven and nothing came from there, no mercy or redemption. Whatever had come had come already and it was not sent by God. I stood, arms outstretched and empty, like a man praying but I was not praying, I was crying, because it had come to this and I had come to this place, and they were not with me... they were gone for ever.
James Robertson
It is energy the central element of which is will that produces the miracles of enthusiasm in all ages. It is the mainspring of what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.
Samuel Smiles
MortalityOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,He passes from life to his rest in the grave.The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,Be scattered around, and together be laid;And the young and the old, the low and the high,Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroudOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
William Knox
It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.
George MacDonald
Writers have a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric. Everything you've heard is true.
Sara Sheridan
By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato.
Grant Morrison
in a few moments he came into the core of himself, where he was alone, and felt strangely companioned, not by anyone or anything, but by himself. The rejected self found refuge here, not a cowed refuge, but somehow a wandering ease; as if it were indestructible, and had its own final pride, its own secret eyes.
Neil M. Gunn
You're warning me off. There's no need, I assure you. At this moment in time, my only ambition is to get myself through the day ---" He broke off, realising too late what he'd admitted, remembering, suddenly, why he had kissed her in the first place. And now he'd given her the perfect opening to start again.But to his surprise, her expression softened. "Yes," she said. "That is how I have felt since --- since." She blinked rapidly, and forced a smile. "It is a good thing, this -- this---between us, because now I know that I am recovering myself...
Marguerite Kaye
There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.
Mrs. Oliphant
If you've been hurt and you've grieved and you've been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.
Sara Sheridan
Words are themselves organisms, ...
Ali Smith
There is no Thanksgiving back in the old country where I come from. You know why? Because being thankful is a sin.
Craig Ferguson
One group of riders doped, the others alongside them racing clean. You can work out for yourselves which group was fastest.
David Millar
Kissing gave a man all sorts of immoral ideas. Such ideas were, in Madame Hera's world, the province only of men. That Ainsley herself had had ideas - her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Madame would say to that.tIn fact, those very ideas cropped up in several of the letters Felicity had forwarded to her, variously referred to as 'unnatural desires,' 'longing,' 'carnal stirrings,' fever of the blood,' 'indecent thoughts' and even, memorably, 'an irrepressible need to scratch an itch.
Marguerite Kaye
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes but in liking what one has to do.
Sir James M. Barrie
But deep this truth impress'd my mind: Thro' all His works abroad,The heart benevolent and kindThe most resembles God.
Robert Burns
It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts, but benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.
George MacDonald
Escape is a commodity like anything else
Iain Banks
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us And foolish notion.
Robert Burns
The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
Alexander MacLaren
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
Iain M. Banks
The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.
Oswald Chambers
Alan," cried I, "what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?"Deed, and I don't, know" said Alan. "For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:—and now I like ye better!
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.
Thomas Carlyle
Now, quite apart from the fact that, from the point of view of the Earther, socialism suffers the devastating liability of only exhibiting internal contradictions when you are trying to use it as an adjunct to your own stupidity (unlike capitalism, which again, from the point of view of the Earther, happily has them built in from the start), it is the case that because Free Enterprise got there first and set up the house rules, it will always stay at least one kick ahead of its rivals.
Iain M. Banks
If we don't value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?
Sara Sheridan
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.
John Muir
She looked... She looked young, and- and--" I glanced down at Rossana gazing up at me, lips parted, eyes shining, her hair loose around her shoulders, and the next words I spoke were intended with no artifice at all. "She is almost as beautiful as you." There was laughter, and I looked up, confused. "If you wish to pay court to my daughter, Matteo, you must first speak to me," Captain dell'Orte said in mock severity. Rossana's face colored pink."Elizabetta is also very beautiful," I said quickly, thinking to cover any embarassment, but also because it was true. The adults roared with laughter. "Now Matteo seeks to woo both girls with one compliment.
Theresa Breslin
The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.
John Muir
Happiness ... consists in giving and in serving others.
Henry Drummond