Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 8

The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.
Alexander Smith
To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
Sir Walter Scott
Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
Sir James M. Barrie
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully.
Thomas Carlyle
No one provokes me with impunity (nemo me impune lacessit)
Motto of Scotland
Concentrate your energies your thoughts and your capital. ... The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
Andrew Carnegie
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.
Sir Walter Scott
If there is anything that can be called genius it consists chiefly in the ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.
Thomas Reid
Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.
David Hume
To see her is to love her And love but her forever For Nature made her what she is And never made another.
Robert Burns
The moment one definitely commits oneself the Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision raising unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
WH. Murray
The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
Andrew Carnegie
The three great elements of modern civilization Gunpowder Printing and the Protestant Religion.
Thomas Carlyle
Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
George MacDonald
I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
Robert Louis Stevenson
It is not by driving away our brother that we can be alone with God.
George MacDonald
It is very nice to think The world is full of meat and drink With little children saying grace In every Christian kind of place.
Robert Louis Stevenson
O Douglas O Douglas! Tender and true.
Sir Richard Holland
The healthy being craves an occasional wildness a jolt from normality a sharpening of the edge of appetite his own little festival of the Saturnalia a brief excursion from his way of life.
Robert Maclver
The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change of perpetual flux.
Sir James Frazer
Wherever we are it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else and whatever we do however well we do it it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.
Robert Louis Stevenson
By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Adam Smith
Confederation is only yet in the gristle and it will require five years more before it hardens into bone.
John A. Macdonald
The habitant is the true Canadian for he has no other country.
Ramsay Traquair
Everyone lives by selling something.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Debt is a bottomless sea.
Thomas Carlyle
Nothing is interesting if you're not interested.
Helen Maclnness
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle
Biography is the only true history.
Thomas Carlyle
Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
Thomas Carlyle
How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love's beginning.
Thomas Campbell
Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the Everywhere into here.
George MacDonald
If you can walk you can dance. Zimbabwe saying Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Thomas Carlyle
O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us!
James Drummond Burns
Wee sleekit cow'rin timrous beastie 0 what a panic's in thy breastie! Wi' bickering brattle!
Robert Burns
As the world is wearie of me so am I of it.
John Knox
By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.
Thomas Carlyle
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Thomas Carlyle
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a steppingstone in the path of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle
Adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer.
Sir Walter Scott
Let us do or die.
James Drummond Burns
But search the land of living men Where wilt thou find their like again.
Sir Walter Scott
If a man is worth knowing at all he is worth knowing well.
Alexander Smith
He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.
David Hume
Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.
Thomas Carlyle
Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?
Robert Louis Stevenson
Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.
Sara Sheridan
They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?
Sara Sheridan
What the best novels and novelists do is to offer a different way of seeing.
Aminatta Forna
Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.
Sara Sheridan
My job is to find the politicians and the presidents and the pompous people who are telling other people how to live, powerful, visible creatures and ... go at them.
Craig Ferguson
Remember whose you are and whom you serve.
Oswald Chambers
I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace.
Oswald Chambers
He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash.
Sara Sheridan
All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn,Led yellow Autumn, wreath'd with nodding
Robert Burns
In September countless sand and house-martins jazz above the river, taking insects from the surface, from the air, thousands of birds kissing the river farewell. They creak, a sound like the air rubbing against itself. Summer is everything they know; they're preparing themselves, sensing in the shortening days a door they must dash through before it shuts.
Kathleen Jamie