Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 23

Through silent alleys where dark shadows fleeted past them like forest beasts on the prowl; through bustling market-places where bloaters predominated, into crammed gin-palaces where the gas flashed over faces whereon was stamped the indelible impression of a protest against creation; brushing tatters which were in gruesome harmony with the haggard or bloated features.("The Phantom Model
Hume Nisbet
If you tempted a poor man with a fortune, who could blame the fellow for taking what he could?
Sara Sheridan
Is there for honest Poverty That hings his head, an' a' that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that. Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man's a Man for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, an' a' that, His ribband, star, an' a' that: The man o' independent mind He looks an' laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities an' a' that; The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, (As come it will for a' that,) That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.
Robert Burns
A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind.
Robert Louis Stevenson
One additional unit of income can do a hundred times as much to the benefit the extreme poor as it can to benefit you or I [earning the typical US wage of $28,000 or ‎£18,000 per year]. [I]t's not often you have two options, one of which is a hundred times better than the other. Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beet for $5 or buy someone else a beer for 5¢. If that were the case, we'd probably be pretty generous – next round's on me! But that's effectively the situation we're in all the time. It's like a 99% off sale, or buy one, get ninety-nine free. It might be the most amazing deal you'll see in your life.
William MacAskill
It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag.
George MacDonald
the ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces.
Iain M. Banks
God's friendship is with people who know their poverty.
Oswald Chambers
As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis's opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house: which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that "the visitation" occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen - at least nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs Jarvis said with unconscious poetry. ("The Open Door")
Mrs. Oliphant
I can hear clouds drifting across the sky! The worms beneath my feet…demand freedom from the darkness…the secret hopes of humankind…all of it trivial. I can see into other worlds…other universes…they’re calling out to me. They’ve always called to me! I never knew that until now, but now I know everything.
Kirkland Ciccone
If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood--darkness is the time to listen.
Oswald Chambers
Darkness came like a black flag waved over the canyon, drawing back the grayness from the shores of the city, then pushing forward the individual specks of street and building lights as though in recompense.
Iain M. Banks
No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.
Janice Galloway
Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!
Billy Connolly
I dinnae get people, like they all want to be watched, to be seen, like all the time. They put up their pictures online and let people they dinnae like look at them! And people they’ve never met as well, and they all pretend tae be shinier than they are – and some are even posting on like four sites; their bosses are watching them at work, the cameras watch them on the bus, and on the train, and in Boots, and even outside the chip shop. Then even at home – they’re going online to look and see who they can watch, and to check who’s watching them!
Jenni Fagan
That's the thing about distance: It either gives you time to move on form someone, or it makes you realize just how much you need them.
Estelle Maskame
You've got nothing to be worried about," he whispers slowly, his breath hot against my cheek, "because, baby, I'm all yours.
Estelle Maskame
I don't know what being in love with someone is supposed to feel like," Tyler admits with a breathy laugh, "but if being in love means thinking about someone every second of every day... If being in love means your entire mood shifts when they're around... If being in love means you'd do anything and everything for them," he murmurs, "then I am endlessly in love with you.
Estelle Maskame
Is there a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone?
Estelle Maskame
Dark haired guys are so, so much better.
Estelle Maskame
It's gonna take me a lot longer than a year without you to get over you.
Estelle Maskame
I need you because I'm in love with you, Eden, and I have no idea how I'll ever get over you.
Estelle Maskame
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
It was supposed to be us against the world, Tyler and me versus everyone else. Now it's just me.
Estelle Maskame
We promised we'd all stay in touch. Even joked about a yearly reunion. These kinds of goodbyes are the scary goodbyes. The goodbyes where you know the chances of seeing each other again are very slim.
Estelle Maskame
I think parks like these are the best places to people-watch. The diversity of people here is really cool and, again I find myself wondering what they're doing and why they're here and who they're with. I'm far too curious for my own good.
Estelle Maskame
We become side-tracked if we make physical health our aim and imagine that because we are children of God we shall always be perfectly well.
Oswald Chambers
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
Satan takes occasion of the frailty of the bodily temple and says, 'Now you know you cannot do that; you are so infirm, you cannot concentrate your mind,' etc. Never allow bodily infirmities to hinder you obeying the commands of Jesus.
Oswald Chambers
Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.
Oswald Chambers
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
Samuel Smiles
Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.
Sara Sheridan
I don't think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won't learn anything unless you enjoy it.
Alasdair Gray
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
You won't find someone who treats you as you should be treated until you start to believe you are worth the ones you want, the ones who aren't asking you to do any work. Find the man who appreciates you at your best, not one who confirms your worst suspicions about yourself.
Mhairi McFarlane
Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him.
Oswald Chambers
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
Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.
Sara Sheridan
The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.
Sara Sheridan
This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.
Sara Sheridan
Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.
Sara Sheridan
But now we live in a time and in a culture when mystery tends to mean something more answerable, it means a crime novel, a thriller, a drama on TV, usually one where we'll find out - and where the whole point of reading it or watching it will be that we will find out - what happened.
Ali Smith
The scraps of information she’d gathered knocked against each other, like balls in a pinball machine in one of the arcades on the front. Secrets drew her in every time – the unsaid.
Sara Sheridan
Books make such good friends and quiet neighbors.
Catriona McPherson
Adrian's tone suggested that the desire for something was all it took. They all live with endless possibilities, leave their homes for the sake of something new. But the dream is woven from the fabric of freedom. For desire to exist it requires the element of possibility, and that for Kai has never existed, until now...
Aminatta Forna
It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts, but benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.
George MacDonald
The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
George MacDonald
When you want something badly enough it’s amazing what you’ll ignore.
Sara Sheridan
Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.
Sara Sheridan
He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.
Sara Sheridan
Human nature is seldom at a loss to find or create an excuse for pursuing the predominant bias of inclination.
Helen Craik
It was very quiet at the hotel, as if there had been a death in the family. When you have quit the Tour, nobody really knows what to say or do. (...) Everything I'd previously achieved meant nothing; all I was now was a pro rider who couldn't finish the Tour de France.
David Millar
Alas, how easily things go wrong!A sigh too much, a kiss too longAnd there follows a mist and a weeping rainAnd life is never the same again
George MacDonald
To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven and to what small purpose: and how often we have been cowardly and hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness; -it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity. He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it is - so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys - this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: -surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n аw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.
Irvine Welsh
The ability to overcome failure--to live through it and move on--is crucial. If we are not willing to face failure--if we don't have the skills to survive it--we have precluded any real creativity or risk. Failure may never become our friend, but if we are to do meaningful work, perhaps failure needs to be our companion.
John Hunter
If my life be not my own, it were criminal for me to put it in danger, as well as to dispose of it; nor could one man deserve the appellation of hero, whom glory or friendship transports into the greatest dangers, and another merit the reproach of wretch or misereant who puts a period to his life, from the same or like motives.
David Hume
War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.
Aminatta Forna
When suicide is out of fashion we conclude that none but madmen destroy themselves; and all the efforts of courage appear chimerical to dastardly minds ... Nevertheless, how many instances are there, well attested, of men, in every other respect perfectly discreet, who, without remorse, rage, or despair, have quitted life for no other reason than because it was a burden to them, and have died with more composure than they lived?
David Hume
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation.
Adam Smith