Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 34

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)
John Muir
He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.
Aminatta Forna
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
Thomas Carlyle
They were probably reading on their tablets,” said Nina loyally. She loved her e-reader, too. “Yes, I know,” said the man. “But I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see what they were reading or ask them if it was good, or make a mental note to look for it later. It was as if suddenly, one day, all the books simply disappeared.
Jenny Colgan
That's the thing about distance: It either gives you time to move on from someone, or it makes you realize just how much you need them.
Estelle Maskame
If Jesus Christ were to come today people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner and hear what he had to say and make fun of him.
Thomas Carlyle
All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely.
Alasdair MacIntyre
Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.
Thomas Carlyle
Look on the happy side, think of the good things. Hadn't it been clever? Yes, it had.
Iain Banks
Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.
Craig Ferguson
Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago [I was a child then]--nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words [not to mention my features and gestures], I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers.
Samuel Smiles
You must be Independent, Independent, Independent - don't talk so much but do more - go your own way and let your neighbour go his... Shake off all the props - the props tradition and authority give you - and go alone - crawl - stumble - stagger - but go alone.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Hope is the first thing to take some sort of action.
John Armstrong
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words.
Robert Louis Stevenson
If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy things that don’t make sense.
Sara Sheridan
I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.
Sara Sheridan
I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.
Oswald Chambers
This internal sea. The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads ay poisonous flotsam and jetsam... that poison is diluted by the sea, but once the ocean rolls out, it leaves the shite behind, inside ma body.
Irvine Welsh
If you can't support us when we lose or draw, don't support us when we win
Bill Shankly
It was supposed to be us against the world, Tyler and me versus everyone else. Now it's just me.
Estelle Maskame
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
Eve and the apple was the first great step in experimental science.
James Bridie
We have more choice than ever before about where and how we buy and read books.
Sara Sheridan
While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.
Sara Sheridan
Gaining heaven, being delivered from sin, and being made useful to God are things that should never even be a consideration in real surrender.
Oswald Chambers
This isn’t fiction, the man says. This is the Post Office.
Ali Smith
It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. But the first broadside puts all to rights.
Sir Walter Scott
Edinburgh is alive with words.
Sara Sheridan
Well! marriage is like death, it comes to all.
Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s Christmas, and no matter what historical usage you choose to assign to “mass” be it mission or Lord’s Supper, Christ’s Mass refers to WHY he came, not THAT he came. Christ’s mission was to be a sacrifice.
William Branks
All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.
Thomas Carlyle
Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric.
Sara Sheridan
At Bealltainn, or May Day, every effort was made to scare away the fairies, who were particularly dreaded at this season. In the West Highlands charms were used to avert their influence. In the Isle of Man the gorse was set alight to keep them at a distance. In some parts of Ireland the house was sprinkled with holy water to ward off fairy influence. These are only a mere handful out of the large number of references available, but they seem to me to reveal an effort to avoid the attentions of discredited deities on occasions of festival once sacred to them. The gods duly return at the appointed season, but instead of being received with adoration, they are rebuffed by the descendants of their former worshippers, who have embraced a faith which regards them as demons.In like manner the fairies in Ireland were chased away from the midsummer bonfires by casting fire at them. At the first approach of summer, the fairy folk of Scotland were wont to hold a "Rade," or ceremonial ride on horseback, when they were liable to tread down the growing grain.
Lewis Spence
To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.
David Hume
We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ’s cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.
Samuel Rutherford
The ruin of a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold them forth as its essence.
George MacDonald
Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.
Sara Sheridan
Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.
Sara Sheridan
Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.The only vengeance worth having on sinis to make the sinner himself its executioner.
George MacDonald
A fool and his money are soon parted.
George Buchanan
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
A body of ten ounces raised in any scale may serve as a proof, that the counterbalancing weight exceeds ten ounces; but can never afford a reason that it exceeds a hundred.
David Hume
If the newspapers begin to publish stories about wars, and the people begin to think and talk of war in their daily conversations, they soon find themselves at war. People get that which their minds dwell upon, and this applies to a group or community or a nation of people, the same as to an individual
Andrew Carnegie
The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.
Oswald Chambers
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
Oswald Chambers
When she first moved to Brighton, the flat on the Lawns had felt luxurious and it had seemed as if she was settling down, sleeping in the same bed every night, the darkness uninterrupted by any hint of emergency. It had felt as if all her difficulties were over.
Sara Sheridan
I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.
Iain Banks
But deep this truth impress'd my mind: Thro' all His works abroad,The heart benevolent and kindThe most resembles God.
Robert Burns
I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace.
Oswald Chambers
the truth she gathered, enlarging her strength, enlarged likewise the composure that comes of strength.
George MacDonald
Readership is highly dependent upon format and distribution as much as it is on content.
Sara Sheridan
Give me but one hour of Scotland Let me see it ere I die.
Wiluam E. Aytoun
Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.
Sara Sheridan
They speak very well of you".- "They speak very well of everybody."- "That so bad?"- "Yes. It means you can´t trust them.
Iain M. Banks
All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn,Led yellow Autumn, wreath'd with nodding
Robert Burns
To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God.
George MacDonald
Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.
David Hume
Once you bid farewell to discipline you say goodbye to success
Alex Ferguson
The beautiful thing about it is that no two directors or actors work the same way. You also learn not to be afraid of discussion and conflict.
Ewan McGregor
If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.
Oswald Chambers