Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 35

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.
James Beattie
[T]he great end of education . . . is to persuade and to inspire the sincere love of virtue.
George Turnbull
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle
Have more humility. Remember you don't know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers.
A.L. Kennedy
He will know from and early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don't.
Craig Ferguson
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it. However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them.
Nan Shepherd
It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.
Ali Smith
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
People think we didn't have theatres in Scotland for centuries because the Church suppressed them. Well, perhaps. But you could also argue that we had theatres in every town and village in the land: they were called kirks, and every week folk packed in to see a one-man show about life, death and the universe.
James Robertson
There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable.
George MacDonald
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
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.
David Hume
People didn't really like McDonald's, same as her mum didn't really like Catholicism, but when you were new in town, at least it was a known quantity. So that'll be a Quarter-Pounder and a Communion Wafer meal-deal to go.
Christopher Brookmyre
The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.
Thomas Carlyle
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
One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.
Iain Banks
To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.
David Hume
As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.
David Hume
When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.
David Hume
You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex.
Craig Ferguson
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 it.
Thomas Carlyle
Metaforen är ett av tankens väsentligaste verktyg. Den belyser vad som annars skulle ligga helt i mörker. Men denna belysning blir ibland så klar att den bländar istället för avslöjar.
Alasdair Gray
Anybody with leisure can do that who is willing to begin where everything ought to be begun--that is, at the beginning. Nothing worth calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of any good is life, and the very body of created life, and essential to it, being its self operant, is growth. The larger start you make, the less room you leave for life to extend itself. You fill with the dead matter of your construction the places where assimilation ought to have its perfect work, building by a life-process, self-extending, and subserving the whole. Small beginnings with slow growings have time to root themselves thoroughly--I do not mean in place nor yet in social regard, but in wisdom. Such even prosper by failures, for their failures are not too great to be rectified without injury to the original idea.
George MacDonald
An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils".
Robert Louis Stevenson
Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initative or creation, there is one elementary truth...that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves. too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in ones's favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way. Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.
W.H.Murray
A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.
James Robertson
I write to escape. I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it
William Meikle
One day you will tell me how to change what I cannot yet describe without my words swelling HUGE, vowels vanishing, tears washing ink away.
Alasdair Gray
May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one another with nukes. "Dead From the Waist Down" on MTV. The humidity's making me horny and mad. I miss Robin. In his new book, Ken Wilbur calls it "skin hunger". I feel like I'm building up a charge. Monsoon's on its way.
Grant Morrison
After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock.
Craig Ferguson
As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
Iain Banks
He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato.
Grant Morrison
...there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.
Alasdair Gray
You can cover a great deal of country in books.
Andrew Lang
Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.
Craig Ferguson
No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....
Alexander Trocchi
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
Iain M. Banks
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Oswald Chambers
Anyone who, neglecting that fixed hour of prayer, [will] say he can pray at all times but will probably end in praying at no time.
Eric Liddell
If, in the quiet of your heart, you feel something should be done, stop and consider whether it is in line with the character and teaching of Jesus. If so, obey that impulse to do it, and in doing so you will find it was God guiding you.
Eric Liddell
Sometimes we simply don't want to face the truth about ourselves; the myth reads so much better. Sometimes we do not seek help because it will mean we have to change, and change is painful and unpredictable. To me, now, faith is bringing all that is true about our lives into the blinding light of God's grace. It is believing that He will still be there at the end of the journey, and so will we, perhaps a little bloodied, probably with a limp, and possibly, as the Skin Horse said, with most of our hair loved off, but we will be there.
Sheila Walsh
I now think it takes more faith to name our need than to keep believing that something will happen and not doing anything about it. It takes faith, and great courage, to get help, to take the first painful step toward the dream that is in our hearts...I know now that you can look at bricks and cement for years, believing in the vision of a home, but until you get down on your hands and knees and start to build, it will remain a dream.
Sheila Walsh
... God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.
Oswald Chambers
We act like pagans in a crisis--only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.
Oswald Chambers
But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.
Sheila Walsh
The Father is truly the only Promise Maker who is in earnest a Promise Keeper. A promise from God is a promise kept.
Sheila Walsh
The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.
Oswald Chambers
Tho' you're tired and weary, still journey on, Till you come to your happy abode,Where all the love you've been dreaming of,Will be there at the end of the road.
Harry Lauder
No one could say the stories were uselessfor as the tongue clackedfive or forty fingers stitchedcorn was grated from the huskpathwork was piecedor the darning was done...(from 'The Storyteller Poems')
Liz Lochhead
Here they have no time for the fine gracesof poetry, unless it freely growsin deep compulsion, like water in the well,woven into the texture of the soilin a strong pattern.
Iain Crichton Smith
Landscape is my religion....God in a green legend, I lean over the poolIn a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branchesAnd floored with a skin of water.
Norman MacCaig
Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,Flow gently, I'll sing theea song in thy praise;My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dream.Thou stock dove whose echoresounds thro' the glen,Ye wild whistly blackbirdsin yon thorny den,Thou green crested lapwingthy screaming forbear,I charge you, disturb notmy slumbering fair.How lofty, sweet Afton,thy neighboring hills,Far mark'd with the coursesof clear winding rills;There daily I wanderas noon rises high,My flocks and my Mary'ssweet cot in my eye.How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where, wild in the woodlands,the primroses blow;There oft, as mild eveningweeps over the lea,The sweet-scented birk shadesmy Mary and me.Thy crystal stream, Afton,how lovely it glides,And winds by the cot wheremy Mary resides;How wanton thy watersher snowy feet lave,As, gathering sweet flowerets,she stems thy clear wave.Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,Flow gently, sweet river,the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dreams.
Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Robert Burns
The VagabondGive to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven aboveAnd the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river -There's the life for a man like me,There's the life for ever.Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field -Warm the fireside haven -Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.
Thomas Carlyle
I bleed myself to be your drink:Is not the blood of poets—ink?
William Soutar
Twas the night before Thanksgiving. All the food's in the oven. And I'm in the bedroom performin' self lovin'.
Craig Ferguson
I've got mixed feelings about poetry cause done well poetry is fantastic. But not many people are capable of doing it well. I think you should have some kind of license to perform poetry. A poetic license perhaps.
Craig Ferguson