Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 19

When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again.
Irvine Welsh
A people religiously right, will not long remain politically wrong.
William Arnot
The Culture gives us so much, but in fact it’s only taking things away from us, lobotimizings everybody in it, taking away their choices, their potential for being really good or even slightly bad.
Iain M. Banks
Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.
Sara Sheridan
It was ridiculous really. I had just won a major race despite not being in top form, yet I was going to dope.
David Millar
Maria didn’t fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.
Sara Sheridan
He comes where He commands us to leave.
Oswald Chambers
So long as we love we serve so long as we are loved by others I would almost say that we are indispensable and no man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The world can be such a fright, but it belongs to us tonight.
Craig Ferguson
Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account, in expectation of a return, I know I should be disappointed, and that I should in vain depend upon your gratitude. Here then I leave you to labour alone; You treat me in the same manner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.
David Hume
Indulge your passion for science…but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume
Temptations come as a general rule when they are sought.
Margaret Oliphant
If God sees that my spiritual life will be furthered by giving the things for which I ask then He will give them but that is not the end of prayer. The end of prayer is that I come to know God Himself.
Oswald Chambers
To be unable to bear disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting. Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is deeper than all right, namely, perfect love.
George MacDonald
What millions died - that Caesar might be great!
Thomas Campbell
Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.
Irvine Welsh
A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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
The greatest of faults I should say is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle
What I am trying to tell you,” Trinka said softly, looking back at him, “is that there are good ways to live, and bad ones. This is not a matter of opinion; it is objective truth. The Empire fights the Wilders because we need their land; that’s true. But there are other reasons. We fight them because they are unworthy. They are not fit to share this world – this divine gift – with folk who do not murder children. With people who do not rape women, or make slaves of the weak. The Wilders are undeserving of the gift of life, of divine choice. They are not fit to be called Children of Bræa. Their way of life is a blight upon the earth. They may look like men, but they live, and behave, like beasts.“If they were able to learn to live like civilized folk,” she sighed, “then we would make it our business to teach them; indeed, I would account it our duty to bring them into the light. We have tried. It has been more than a century since we first began settling the frontiers beyond the mountains, and in the three-score years since Duncala, we have tried many times to bring them the gift of civilization. But if they will not learn to act like civilized men, then civilized men are not obliged to tolerate them. The whole of Bræa’s creation, her divine intent, and her gift of choice to all of us – the gift of choice that grants us the possibility, and therefore the obligation, of bettering ourselves! – cries out against tolerating what by any reasoned definition is utter, bestial depravity. “We are Bræa’s heirs, the inheritors of her divine design. We are not obliged to endure depravity,” she said gravely. “We are obliged to redeem it, if we can; but if we cannot, then our obligation – to ourselves, our posterity, and the Holy Mother’s design – is to end it.” She cocked her head. “In this wise, it might help to think of the Wilders as little different from the hordes of Bardan, whose legacy of death and devastation ended the ancient world, and plunged all into darkness for twice a thousand years.” Her fist clenched involuntarily. “We will not suffer the darkness again, Esuric Mason. My brothers...my former comrades, I mean...they will not allow it.” She looked down at her hands. For a wonder, they were steady. “I will not allow it,” she whispered.- The Wizard's Eye (Hallow's Heart, Book II; Forthcoming)
D. Alexander Neill
From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.
George MacDonald
No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lyingas in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.
Thomas Carlyle
The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are “in the soup” of actual circumstances.
Oswald Chambers
Reality—there’s nothing but horror in that.
A.L. Kennedy
Time for the likeliest story since Mary told Joseph it was God’s.
Val McDermid
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley.An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'
Robert Burns
Marain, the Culture’s quintessentially wonderful language (so the Culture will tell you), has, as any schoolkid knows, one personal pronoun to cover females, males, in-betweens, neuters, children, drones, Minds, other sentient machines, and every life-form capable of scraping together anything remotely resembling a nervous system and the rudiments of language (or a good excuse for not having either). Naturally, there are ways of specifying a person’s sex in Marain, but they’re not used in everyday conversation
Iain M. Banks
If you persist over time, refusing to take offense, making your motive genuine, showing respect, and constantly searching for Mutual Purpose, then the other person will almost join you in a dialogue.
Ron McMillan
Beware of anything that would tarnish God's mirror in you. It is always something good stains it—good, but not best.
Oswald Chambers
A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last.
Oswald Chambers
There was something indomitable about Maria – like Britannia. He’d heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said.
Sara Sheridan
ThatNeed to knowYour enemyTo surviveIs bitter.
Maud Sulter
Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him.
Oswald Chambers
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?
Andrew Lang
She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what lightning is made of, for everything comes back to the weather. Tears like rain. Smiles like the sun. Hair as dry as sand and fear like the dark ocean.
Sara Sheridan
You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable.
Alasdair Gray
Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind. There is, in the very feeling of those passions, something harsh, jarring, and convulsive, something that tears and distracts the breast, and is altogether destructive of that composure and tranquillity of mind which is so necessary to happiness, and which is best promoted by the contrary passions of gratitude and love.
Adam Smith
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot
Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.
Oswald Chambers
The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.
Craig Ferguson
The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil.
Oswald Chambers
In the end, he had to admit, he didn't really understand her. He didn't understand women. He didn't understand men. He didn't even understand children very well. All he really understood, he thought, was himself and the rest of the universe. Neither anything like completely, of course, but both well enough to know that what remained to be discovered would make sense; it would fit in, it could all be gradually and patiently fitted together a bit at a time, like an infinite jigsaw puzzle, with no straight edges to look for and no end in sight, but one in which there was always going to be somewhere for absolutely any piece to fit.
Iain Banks
All people that on earth do dwellsing to the Lord with cheerful voiceHim serve with fear, his praise forth tellcome ye before him and rejoice
William Kethe
In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I've discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of my work.
Sara Sheridan
So, fuck ’em, we say. Fuck the mundane of Mainstream, the elitists of Literature. We’re GENRE FICTION and proud of it, proud to wear that brand painted on the backs of our biker’s jackets.
Hal Duncan
Living like this is a full-time business.
Irvine Welsh
Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?
Aminatta Forna
The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.
Sara Sheridan
He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything
Thomas Carlyle
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God and that alters my view of actual things.
Oswald Chambers
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.…'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
David Hume
If you want to know a country, read its writers.
Aminatta Forna
To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads?
Grant Morrison
The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.
Irvine Welsh
Then in June Linda got sick. Word went around town that Roger was looking real serious 'cause his wife was 'took ill bad'. So my mother cooked up a big casserole to take up there; they could eat off it for says, she said. 'The poor young couple, with her sick I guess they must have to make do with canned pork and beans. Take this on over there,' she told me.'She can't cook anyways,' I said. 'I told you that.''Nonsense. Every woman can cook, now go on.'I went on up there, carrying the heavy casserole. Even cold it smelled good and if it hand't been for Roger I would have sat down and eaten it on the ways. Waste of good food to take it to 'her', I thought; she'd probably preferred canned beans.I got up to the farm and found the door locked. That was strange, let me tell you. Around here nobody locks the door, even at night or when they're out. You just never know, a farmer or a kid like me might have to come in and use the phone in a hurry, or the bathroom, and everybody knows everybody anyway. But the door was locked. I put the casserole dish down on the front step and sat there on the steps awhile, to see if Roger or Linda came along.Nobody came and the June sun was hot. Roger doesn't have a brook up there, like we do, so I couldn't get wading. I looked around for a hose or something. I walked to the back of the house and decided to climb the apple tree there; that was something to do at least. Up in the apple tree I could see into the windows of the house; they were too high for me to see in from the ground. I was looking into the bedroom. There was Linda, sleeping. In the day! But she was supposed to be sick, so it was all right. Except that then I saw that she wasn't lying in that bed alone. There was another head there, on the pillow beside her. Roger has dark hair and this person didn't. This person was a man with blond hair. I didn't get a good look at his face. I was seeing the side of his head, then the head went over LInda's face and she was covered up by him.
Deborah Moffatt
Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.
Sara Sheridan
I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do.
Billy Connolly
She did not even trouble herself much to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
George MacDonald