Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 31

Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope." George Matheson
George Matheson
To be defeated, but not to give in, is victory.- Jósef Piłsudski
Neal Ascherson
The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling . . . every crystal every flower a window opening into heaven a mirror reflecting the Creator.
John Muir
He tried to decide if he was really ashamed of being afraid, and decided that he was not. Fear was there for a purpose. It was wired into any creature that had not completely turned its back on its evolutionary inheritance and so remade itself in whatever image it coveted. The more sophisticated you became, the less you relied on fear and pain to keep you alive; you could afford to ignore them because you had other means of coping with the consequences if things went badly.
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
Critics! Appalled I ventured on the name.Those cutthroat bandits in the paths of fame.
Robert Burns
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the final rehearsed words, “Treat me as one of your hired servants” are smothered by his father’s embrace! He will not have his son home only on condition that he “does penance” in order to work his way back into his father’s grace. He does not need to “repent enough” to be accepted.Sinclair B. Ferguson. The Whole Christ (Kindle Locations 1913-1916). Crossway.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
University's like this little world, a bubble of time separate from everything before and everything after.
Mhairi McFarlane
It is one thing to follow God's way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a 'doormat' under other people's feet.
Oswald Chambers
[I]t was really only in the generation or two before hers that the idea had started to traverse the spectrum of likelihood in the popular imagination, beginning at unthinkable, progressing to absurd, then going from possible but unlikely to probable and likely, before eventually arriving – round about the time of her birth – at seemingly inevitable.
Iain M. Banks
But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.
Sheila Walsh
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume
A man is a fool to live in hopes of a better tomorrow. I have a thousand, better ways today to spend what time remains ahead of me, and I have brighter, lighter and more pleasant places in which to spend it.
Jack Whyte
She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.
George MacDonald
How kind you are, North Wind!''I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.
George MacDonald
Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.
George MacDonald
Glasgow is a magnificent city,” said McAlpin. “Why do we hardly ever notice that?” “Because nobody imagines living here…think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.
Alasdair Gray
114 isn't as old as it used to be they say its the new 104.
Craig Ferguson
For Beauty's tears are lovelier than her smile.
Thomas Campbell
I wear a taint of rationing, that's all. I have the thready, ashamed look of a reduced person who assumes there is a worse reduction to come.
Morag Joss
The moment one definitely commits oneself the Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision raising unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
WH. Murray
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Thomas Carlyle
Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.
George MacDonald
Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.
George MacDonald
Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see further.
Thomas Carlyle
I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing.
Janice Galloway
Our greatest good and what we least can spare is hope.
John Armstrong
It is so delightful to teach those one loves!
Andrew Lang
A good gulp of hot whisky at bedtime - it's not very scientific but it helps.
Alexander D. Fleming
This total surrender to 'the love of Christ' is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God's holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.
Oswald Chambers
Hey, Wrobik; cheer up, yeah? You're going to shoot down a fucking starship. It'll be an experience.
Iain Banks
Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin.
David Hume
Strange star-like object over Oslo right before Obama arrives. A gift of a golden medal given by a group of wise men... Nah.
Craig Ferguson
For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.
Sara Sheridan
Cat," said Peterkin, turning his head a little on one side, "I love you.
R.M. Ballantyne
If there is another world he lives in bliss. If there is none he made the best of this.
Robert Burns
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
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings: Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine into flowers the winds will blow their freshness into you and the storms their energy and cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir
I think in our desire to create a better America,we have to have civilized debate in this country and not just yelling.
Craig Ferguson
And the old woman who had been the prince’s nurse became nurse to the prince’s children — at least she was called so; though she was far too old to do anything for them but love them. Yet she still thought that she was useful, and knew that she was happy. And happy, indeed, were the prince and princess, who in due time became king and queen, and lived and ruled long and prosperously.
Andrew Lang
The present is a point just passed.
David Russell
The jungle is alive. It’s dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.
Sara Sheridan
There is an unsearchableness in this mystery of the Godhead, in the mystery of God becoming Man; in the mystery of the Mediator his taking on these offices , to exercise them in our nature; and in speaking or thinking of them, there is a necessity to silence that which our curiosity would propose, for satisfactionabout them; as, namely ., how there are or can be three Persons in the Godhead , and yet but one God. How one of these persons can be man? and how it is , that by Him we have access to God the Father , Son , and Holy Ghost? There is silence required in the how of these things.
James Durham
No paint or dye can give so splendid a colour as gilding. The merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity. With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves.Book I, Chapter 11 - Rent of Land, part II
Adam Smith
The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today.
Oswald Chambers
Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea.
Grant Morrison
It may be that the fear contains information. Something can be interesting if you get to the other side of that fear.
Craig Ferguson
We are home to each other now.
Sara Sheridan
...but the air's flat and stale and the people half-hearted. There's nothing to do there. You can make love without trouble or meaning, or get mildly drunk, or extract second-hand emotions from the cinema, or put your mind to sleep on a dance-floor, or play bridge, or throw yourself in front of a train on the Underground. There are forty ways of escaping from consciousness. But I want something more exciting than that.
Eric Linklater
Don't you know Poole, you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?
Robert Louis Stevenson
We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
Oswald Chambers
However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.
George MacDonald
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
There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of danger-ous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the personof an antagonist odious.
David Hume
All your winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such is the deceitfulness of sin, and the cunning conveyance of that old serpent, that if his head be once entering in, his whole body will easily follow after; and if he make you handsomely to swallow gnats at first, he will make you swallow camels ere all be done. Oh, happy they who dash the little ones of Babylon against the stones (Ps. 137:9)!
George Gillespie
To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination. It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts; seeks for higher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses to regard science as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science as the only region of discovery.
George MacDonald
And then they lived happily, and we who hear the story are happier still.
Andrew Lang
Starting with a party scene for 600 cast and end up singing on top of a giant elephant...does it get any better than this?
Ewan McGregor
It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.
Sara Sheridan
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle