Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 10

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
She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk.
Sara Sheridan
Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood.
Sara Sheridan
Being me is a job — is labour so time-consuming and expensive that I have to have a second job just to support it. So that I can drink, I have to get drink and that isn’t something people give away and then there’s drink that I need because I have drunk and the other drink I have to keep around because, sooner or later, I will drink it. That’s a full-time occupation: that’s like being a miner, or a nurse.
A.L. Kennedy
It seemed that I performed better sober than drunk. Who knew?
Craig Ferguson
A new collection of matter and information to present to the universe and to which it in turn will be presented; different, arguably equal parts of that great ever-repetitive, ever-changing jurisdiction of being.
Iain M. Banks
There was something strange in my sensations, indescribably new and incredibly sweet. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be tenfold more wicked and the thought delighted me like wine.
Robert Louis Stevenson
You must suffer me to go my own dark way.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Indeed, I have observed one ingredient, somewhat necessary in a man’s composition towards happiness, which people of feeling would do well to acquire; a certain respect for the follies of mankind: for there are so many fools whom the opinion of the world entitles to regard, whom accident has placed in heights of which they are unworthy, that he who cannot restrain his contempt or indignation at the sight will be too often quarrelling with the disposal of things to relish that share which is allotted to himself. 
Henry MacKenzie
As far as I was concerned, the best thing one could do for the poor was to not add one’s self to their number.
Ken MacLeod
As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.
Sara Sheridan
You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.
Dorothy Dunnett
This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial as it is astonishing.
Robert Louis Stevenson
When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. The writers I like best are those who attend.
Kathleen Jamie
There are impertinent inquiries made; your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on the matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was!
Thomas Carlyle
The Lord's questions always reveal the true me to myself.
Oswald Chambers
Be careful that you don't become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself.
Oswald Chambers
I have that hypocrisy of a parent in that I'm like,'Come on, you've got to toughen up at the same time let me take care of that for you.
Craig Ferguson
Dashes and disappointments are not canonical Scripture.
Samuel Rutherford
How could I known then that failure then that failure of ambition is like a long lingering death and that disappoint with your life never goes away? It only grows stronger with the passage of time as the clock ticks off the remaining days of your life, and any residual, hope slips like sand through arthritic fingers.
Peter May
I was awarded 'Most Aggressive Rider of the Day', generally given to the most spectacular loser of the day.
David Millar
One group of riders doped, the others alongside them racing clean. You can work out for yourselves which group was fastest.
David Millar
I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.
David Millar
If you can't support us when we lose or draw, don't support us when we win
Bill Shankly
No man who really is a man ever cared for the easy task. There is no enjoyment in the game that is easily won. It is that in which you have to strain every muscle and sinew to achieve victory that provides real joy.
Eric Liddell
a lot of football success is in the mind. you must believe you are the best and then make sure that you are.
Bill Shankly
I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell.
Alex Ferguson
God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.
Eric Liddell
In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best.
Eric Liddell
She was convinced the country was about to succumb to revolutionary socialism. Her own circumstances encouraged this belief: just on the edge of the really rich country set, she shared their views and opinions but lacked the financial and architechtural insulation from real or imagined political troubles. She found crushed larger cans and cigarette packets in her front garden and interpreted these as menacing signals from the Perthshire proletariat. Every flicker and dim of electric light was a portent of class war.
James Robertson
Son, it’s easy tae be guid oan a fu’ belly. It’s when a man’s goat two bites an’ wan o’ them he’ll share, ye ken whit he’s made o’. Listen. In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it’s like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattom. The rest can a’ kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas. We canny, son. We loass the wan idea o’ who we are, we’re deid. We’re wan anither. Tae survive, we’ll respect wan anither. When the time comes, we’ll a’ move forward thegither, or nut at all.
William McIlvanney
Everything was a metaphor; all things were something other than themselves. The pain, for example, was an ocean, and he was adrift on it. His body was a city and his mind a citadel. All communications between the two seemed to have been cut, but within the keep that was his mind he still had power. The part of his consciousness that was telling him the pain did not hurt, and that all things were like other things, was like...like...he found it hard to think of a comparison. A magic mirror, maybe.
Iain M. 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
A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldn't even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldn't at a moment's notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.
George MacDonald
Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind.
Sara Sheridan
I'm a library user and I just don't hoard books. To me, they're for sharing.
Sara Sheridan
The library is a symbol of freedom.
Sara Sheridan
Democracy or reading, democracy of space: our public library tradition, wherever we live in the wide world, was incredibly hard-won for us by the generations before us and ought to be protected, not just for ourselves but in the name of every generation after us.
Ali Smith
It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.' 'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?' 'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.
Iain Banks
It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated.
Alexander Fleming
Doctors is all swabs.
Robert Louis Stevenson
No mortal ear could have heard the kelpie passing through the night, for the great black hooves of it were as soundless in their stride as feathers falling.
Mollie Hunter
As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection.
Lewis Spence
Thus unto winter’s chill embrace I turnWho once the summer’s sun did blithely bide ‘Neath solemn visage cold and fair and sternIn her cool breast my hot heart to confide.Denied the warmth and wit of summer’s sun Or springtime’s strength, and bright, melodious song I dreamed not to complete what I’d begun Nor dared to haste the laggard hours along.But now with spring and summer sun at rest Laid bare before bright winter’s pale charms I would for love of her lay down my quest And take my ease in Winter-Lady’s arms.Before her beauty fair ‘neath snow-swept sky All other seasons blanch and fade, and die.- The Lost Knight's Lament, "Winter's Lady" (Forthcoming)
D. Alexander Neill
Maybe it's easier to talk to someone who won't ever actually hear what you say.
Ali Smith
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
I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics.
Balfour Stewart
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
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
James Boswell
I think people are as individual as snowflakes, they kinda look alike but no two are the exactly the same, and all classification is the root of prejudice.
Craig Ferguson
Anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only reconfirmed a prejudice.
Don Paterson
All prejudice presents itself as piety, propriety.
Hal Duncan
The love of God pays no attention to my prejudices caused by my natural individuality.
Oswald Chambers
The game’s the thing. That’s the conventional wisdom, isn’t it? The fun is what matters, not the victory. To glory in the defeat of another, to need that purchased pride, is to show you are incomplete and inadequate to start with.
Iain M. Banks
America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent....We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years.
Craig Ferguson
But isn't it enough that I just don't want it?""No," said Fiona. "It isn't enough.""Why not?""Well, if that was enough, if just saying no and not giving a reason was enough, where would we be? It would just be chaos.
Ken MacLeod
The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.
George MacDonald
I am a beast until I love as God doth love.
George MacDonald
Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.
Iain Banks
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