Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 33

Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?
Irvine Welsh
I suppose there are some advantages to this place,' he admitted. 'I bet it's fucking raining in Stirling.
Christopher Brookmyre
In a mounting panic the samnite hefted his rifle and delivered a blast straight to Skullhammer's chest, point blank. Once again, torment and debilitation failed to ensue. 'Well, this is awkward,' said Juno.
Christopher Brookmyre
Three,' reckoned the captain, 'ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?'Most likely Trelawney's own men," said the doctor; 'those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.'Nay,' replied the squire. 'Hands was one of mine.'I did think I could have trusted Hands,' added the captain.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I can't help suspecting, that there is, or may be some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a felicate beveridge is quaffed by the drinkers; medicated with the sweat and the dirt, and dandriff; and the abominable of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below.
Tobias Smollett
I find that the old Roman baths of this quarter, were found covered by an old burying ground, belonging to the Abbey; through which, in all probability, the water drains in its passage; so that as we drink the decoction of the living bodies at the Pump-room, we swallow the strainings of rotten bones and carcasses at the private bath - I vow to God, the very idea turns my stomach!
Tobias Smollett
Just because you disagreed with the Poll Tax and detested Margaret Thatcher—""Detest is a little inappropriate," Parlabane said. "Maybe closer to say I spent the entire Eighties wishing I was pissing on her rotting corpse.
Christopher Brookmyre
And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something."The score!" he burst out. "Three goes o' rum! Why, shiver my timbers, if I hadn't forgotten my score!"And, falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could not help joining; and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again.
Robert Louis Stevenson
He felt water run down his back from the damp brickwork he was sitting against, and as he worried distantly about corrosion he realised you can always fall a little further. A moment ago he thought he'd bottomed out, but now he was concerned about personal rust. Mother of fuck.
Christopher Brookmyre
Is it colour?’‘Oh yes.’‘You don’t let me down.You are my ambassador to pr0n, man.
Christopher Brookmyre
You must master the vices. You know that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well. If, however, a thing is not worth doing then it's worth doing fabulously, amazingly, with grace, style and panache.
Isla Dewar
Christmas, as a practicing Catholic child, was seen as a reward for lots and lots and lots of church.
Jenny Colgan
Bowman turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it a gypsy caravan or a baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process.So, in a orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda's caravan to a total ruin.
Alistair MacLean
This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words."Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria.
Alistair MacLean
I have a head for business and a body for sin. Unfortunately, the sin appears to be gluttony.
Jenny Colgan
I know it all, and I still love you." That is the convicting, convincing, liberating truth that comes from an encounter with Christ: all is known; there is no need to pretend anymore. I wrestled with that truth. It's hard to lay aside a mask when it looks just like you, and you have worn it for so long that you can't remember what you look like without it.
Sheila Walsh
Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest, sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been living a life more obedient than the rest.
George MacDonald
Jesus never encouraged His friends to cover over the pain in their lives, but to bring it into the light, where healing is found. Sometimes we don't do that because we fear being rejected by others. Yes, rejection may well happen, but bringing the pain to the light is still the best way to live. It will take much courage, but it will bring freedom.
Sheila Walsh
Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.
Alasdair Gray
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship.
Alexander Fraser Tytler
A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.
George MacDonald
Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form—spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved
George MacDonald
Got a light? See? Careful. I'm everything you ever dreamed.
Ali Smith
...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
Yes of course I know it's all a dream. Isn't everything?
Iain Banks
Not at all. Cooking is cool. I’ll make you one shaped like the moon.”“Why the moon?”“Because you remind me of the moon,” he said, and looked into his bowl. Sarah blushed.
Daniela Sacerdoti
If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place.
Ewan McGregor
A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should do something else first, so they've got something to fall back on. It doesn't work like that, as far as I'm concerned.
Ewan McGregor
Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.
Grant Morrison
What I am trying to tell you,” Trinka said softly, looking back at him, “is that there are good ways to live, and bad ones. This is not a matter of opinion; it is objective truth. The Empire fights the Wilders because we need their land; that’s true. But there are other reasons. We fight them because they are unworthy. They are not fit to share this world – this divine gift – with folk who do not murder children. With people who do not rape women, or make slaves of the weak. The Wilders are undeserving of the gift of life, of divine choice. They are not fit to be called Children of Bræa. Their way of life is a blight upon the earth. They may look like men, but they live, and behave, like beasts.“If they were able to learn to live like civilized folk,” she sighed, “then we would make it our business to teach them; indeed, I would account it our duty to bring them into the light. We have tried. It has been more than a century since we first began settling the frontiers beyond the mountains, and in the three-score years since Duncala, we have tried many times to bring them the gift of civilization. But if they will not learn to act like civilized men, then civilized men are not obliged to tolerate them. The whole of Bræa’s creation, her divine intent, and her gift of choice to all of us – the gift of choice that grants us the possibility, and therefore the obligation, of bettering ourselves! – cries out against tolerating what by any reasoned definition is utter, bestial depravity. “We are Bræa’s heirs, the inheritors of her divine design. We are not obliged to endure depravity,” she said gravely. “We are obliged to redeem it, if we can; but if we cannot, then our obligation – to ourselves, our posterity, and the Holy Mother’s design – is to end it.” She cocked her head. “In this wise, it might help to think of the Wilders as little different from the hordes of Bardan, whose legacy of death and devastation ended the ancient world, and plunged all into darkness for twice a thousand years.” Her fist clenched involuntarily. “We will not suffer the darkness again, Esuric Mason. My brothers...my former comrades, I mean...they will not allow it.” She looked down at her hands. For a wonder, they were steady. “I will not allow it,” she whispered.- The Wizard's Eye (Hallow's Heart, Book II; Forthcoming)
D. Alexander Neill
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
I sometimes think that normal, everyday life is only a delusion. We walk on a think crust of earth which we call peace; and every now and again we can hear a rumble below our feet; and sometimes the crust splits and we see that, underneath there is a glowing inferno ready to erupt. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it is always there.
Helen MacInnes
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
What makes a human being want to kill another who has done him no personal harm? Patriotism.
Theresa Breslin
From the bonny bells of heather,They brewed a drink long syne,Was sweeter far than honey,Was stronger far than wine.They brewed it and they drank it,And lay in blessed swound,For days and days together,In their dwellings underground.There rose a King in Scotland,A fell man to his foes,He smote the Picts in battle,He hunted them like roes.Over miles of the red mountainHe hunted as they fled,And strewed the dwarfish bodiesOf the dying and the dead.Summer came in the country,Red was the heather bell,But the manner of the brewing,Was none alive to tell.In graves that were like children’sOn many a mountain’s head,The Brewsters of the HeatherLay numbered with the dead.The king in the red moorlandRode on a summer’s day;And the bees hummed and the curlewsCried beside the way.The King rode and was angry,Black was his brow and pale,To rule in a land of heather,And lack the Heather Ale.It fortuned that his vassals,Riding free upon the heath,Came on a stone that was fallenAnd vermin hid beneath.Roughly plucked from their hiding,Never a word they spoke:A son and his aged father –Last of the dwarfish folk.The king sat high on his charger,He looked down on the little men;And the dwarfish and swarthy coupleLooked at the king again.Down by the shore he had them:And there on the giddy brink –“I will give thee life ye vermin,For the secret of the drink.”There stood the son and fatherAnd they looked high and low;The heather was red around them,The sea rumbled below.And up spoke the father,Shrill was his voice to hear:“I have a word in private,A word for the royal ear.“Life is dear to the aged,And honour a little thing;I would gladly sell the secret”,Quoth the Pict to the King.His voice was small as a sparrow’s,And shrill and wonderful clear:“I would gladly sell my secret,Only my son I fear.“For life is a little matter,And death is nought to the young;And I dare not sell my honour,Under the eye of my son.Take him, O king, and bind him,And cast him far in the deep;And it’s I will tell the secretThat I have sworn to keep.”They took the son and bound him,Neck and heels in a thong,And a lad took him and swung him,And flung him far and strongAnd the sea swallowed his body,Like that of a child of ten;And there on the cliff stood the father,Last of the dwarfish men.“True was the word I told you:Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courage,That goes without the beard.But now in vain is the torture,Fire shall not avail:Here dies in my bosomThe secret of the Heather Ale.
Robert Louis Stevenson
A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.
A.L. Kennedy
For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
Robert Louis Stevenson
All war will end when women cease to find men in uniforms attractive - discuss.
Bill Drummond
I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.
Grant Morrison
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.
Thomas Carlyle
There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.
Iain Banks
Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something.
John Hannah
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
Thomas Carlyle
I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.
Ewan McGregor
God's time is slow, patient, and kind and welcomes friendship; it is a way of being in the fullness of time that is not determined by productivity, success, or linear movements toward personal goals. It is a way of love, a way of the heart.
John Swinton
she had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself; each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has enough; but we ought each to be able, in the hope of what is one day to come, to endure for a time, not having enough. Letty was unblamable that she desired the comfort of humanity around her soul, but I am not sure that she was quite unblamable in not being fit to walk a few steps alone, or even to sit still and expect. […] and now her heart was like a child left alone in a great room. She had not yet learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are capable only of leaning, and able never to support.
George MacDonald
Jimmy put in a word and told them that if I made it, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without paying them back. That I'd sooner die than owe anyone money for helping me. Apparently Jimmy knew more about me at that point than I knew about myself.
Craig Ferguson
Alan," cried I, "what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?"Deed, and I don't, know" said Alan. "For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:—and now I like ye better!
Robert Louis Stevenson
Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.
Adam Smith
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations
Adam Smith
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus
Alexander Graham Bell
Men are not generally sufficiently aware of the distinction between the law of God and his purpose; they are apt to suppose, that as the temper of the sinner is contrary to the one, so the outrages of the sinner are able to defeat the other; than which nothing can be more false.
John Witherspoon
A dread filled me, a dread unlike any I had ever felt. Not the terror of God, or his angels, but the sickly fear of man.
Aminatta Forna
...the greatest barrier to intimacy is fear -- fear of being known, fear of being rejected, fear of facing the truth about ourselves......We are afraid to be known because at some deep level we fear that the truth about us, when out in the open and reflected back to us through someone else's eyes, will be shocking to ourselves.
Sheila Walsh
The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies.
George MacDonald
Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.
Robert Louis Stevenson
To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The world can be such a fright, but it belongs to us tonight.
Craig Ferguson
Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing.
Craig Ferguson
It may be that the fear contains information. Something can be interesting if you get to the other side of that fear.
Craig Ferguson