Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 24

When we believe that God is Father we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better but we will not resent life any longer.
William Barclay
The world is'nt such a bad place at all - as long as one did'nt read the daily newspaper
Bill Aitken
His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it was probably about to rain anyway.
Mhairi McFarlane
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.
Craig Ferguson
I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the end.
Ewan McGregor
If you are not a Conchie, what are you man?' demanded the Major.After some moments' thought, Francis said, 'I am a human being who does not believe in killing my fellow man for insufficient reason.
Theresa Breslin
When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.
David Hume
The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
Sara Sheridan
I realize that I am not a journalist. So anything I say is not important.
Craig Ferguson
Seek for no meaning in it; it has none. What meaning is there in pain and pleasure? They are twins; that is all we know. Seek no meaning in anything you see here. Images, ideas, flashes of purpose will peer out in all our ways and deeds, but there is no intention here below. Is there any intention anywhere?
John Davidson
People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really.
Sara Sheridan
I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.
Robert Louis Stevenson
We conquer by continuing.
George Matheson
Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
George MacDonald
If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles -- a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story -- the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort -- each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.
John Muir
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
George MacDonald
She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside – ports were places of freedom.
Sara Sheridan
The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.
Sara Sheridan
His heart is pounding and when he kisses her it is as if the whole of Riyadh disappears – the wide sky, the hard surface of the roof, the date palms and the water wells.
Sara Sheridan
If a man is worth knowing at all he is worth knowing well.
Alexander Smith
I see the beginning, I see the end. And in the middle I just hope I don't fall on my ass to much
Shehanne Moore
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
Every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of a man.
Thomas Reid
The truth is that Leon, like a lot of those-maybe everyone-who trips on acid, never really came back. he recovered but he was never the same guy again. He had lost something-innocence of hell. Acid presses a little button in your mind that should never be pressed
Craig Ferguson
I don’t think they can deal with someone being complex and contradictory; it’s not acceptable, you have to be a cartoon, a stereotype.
Shirley Manson
I didn't say no because between safety and adventure I choose adventure.
Craig Ferguson
Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all those who are able to pay. Commerce and manufactures, inshort, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government.
Adam Smith
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
Sir James Dewar
It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
George MacDonald
With every morn my life afresh must breakThe crust of self, gathered about me fresh;That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shakeThe darkness out of me, and rend the meshThe spider-devils spin out of the flesh-Eager to net the soul before it wake,That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.George MacDonald
George MacDonald
Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die.
James Drummond Burns
As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.
Sara Sheridan
I fear you will never arrive at an understanding of God so long as you cannot bring yourself to see the good that often comes as a result of pain. For there is nothing, from the lowest, weakest tone of suffering to the loftiest acme of pain, to which God does not respond. There is nothing in all the universe which does not in some way vibrate within the heart of God. No creature suffers alone; He suffers with His creatures and through it is in the process of bringing His sons and daughters through the cleansing and glorifying fires, without which the created cannot be made the very children of God, partakers of the divine nature and peace.
George MacDonald
Hey dawg, wassup?" he said, in the strange way that white talent agents from Los Angeles do in an attempt to sound like young black men from underprivileged backgrounds. A linguistic fashion as peculiar as the lisp that everybody in medieval Spain had to adopt after the king developed a speech impediment.
Craig Ferguson
I would never speak about faith, but speak about the Lord himself - not theologically, as to the why and wherefore of his death - but as he showed himself in his life on earth, full of grace, love, beauty, tenderness and truth. Then the needy heart cannot help hoping and trusting in him, and having faith, without ever thinking about faith. How a human heart with human feelings and necessities is ever to put confidence in the theological phantom which is commonly called Christ in our pulpits, I do not know. It is commonly a miserable representation of him who spent thirty-three years on our Earth, living himself into the hearts and souls of men, and thus manifesting God to them.
George MacDonald
A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.
Sally Magnusson
You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man--or scarce a man yet--the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late.
Robert Louis Stevenson
A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything.
Oswald Chambers
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of men; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
David Hume
Nothing is more limiting than a closed circle of acquaintanceship where every avenue of conversation has been explored and social exchanges are fixed in a known routine.
A.J. Cronin
Then there rose up before her a vision of a parish saved, a village reformed, a county reorganised, and a triumphant election at the end, the recompense and crown of all, which should put the government of the country itself, to a certain extent, into competent hands.
Mrs. Oliphant
Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in enforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.
David Hume
Metaforen är ett av tankens väsentligaste verktyg. Den belyser vad som annars skulle ligga helt i mörker. Men denna belysning blir ibland så klar att den bländar istället för avslöjar.
Alasdair Gray
If there is another world he lives in bliss If there is none he made the best of this.
Robert Burns
We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.
Grant Morrison
I write to escape. I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it
William Meikle
Coming events cast their shadows before.
Thomas Campbell
It is well if you go in for revenge to make it as complete as possible.("The Vengeance Of The Dead")
Robert Barr
Among the changing months May stands confest The sweetest and in fairest colors dressed.
James Thomson
God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character. Paul was not conscious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose--to proclaim the gospel of God.
Oswald Chambers
Prayer is not logical it is a mysterious moral working of the Holy Spirit.
Oswald Chambers
An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side.
Sara Sheridan
I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.
Frances Wright
You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.
Irvine Welsh
...for all its apparent speed, the ship was almost perfectly silent, and he experienced an enervating, eerie feeling, as though the ancient warship, mothballed all those centuries, had somehow not yet fully woken up, and events within its sleek hull still moved to another, slower tempo, made half of dreams.
Iain Banks
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley And leave us nought but grief and pain For promised joy.
James Drummond Burns
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle
You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson
He's an irrelevant person. Learn to spot irrelevant people. Don't expect someone who doesn't know who they are to care who you are.
Mhairi McFarlane
Prayer is God's answer to our poverty not a power we exercise to obtain an answer.
Oswald Chambers