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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage."
"The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green."
"As we draw on the grace of God He increases voluntary poverty all along the line. Always give the best you have got every time; never think about who you are giving it to; let other people take it or leave it as they choose. Pour out the best you have, and always be poor. Never reserve anything; never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives."
"It was as if she was a dream, like London, which he could not entirely grasp and of which he was not worthy. He wanted to be part of it but had forgotten how. It seemed extraordinary and strange that this paragon among women had condescended to travel on his ship. In fact, she'd insisted upon it. Her presence was at once otherworldly and familiar, none of which explained why his brain ceased to function when he was in her company."
"There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance."
"I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?"
"It means that if they misunderstood Comfort and Joy, they misunderstood my other films."
"I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching."
"To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever."
"It doesn't matter how adventurous you want to be, you've still got to contain your identity."
"He's sharp, he can score and he doesn't worry about missing."
"I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence."
"I don't understand if you get caught in a fight, but take it out on a room, how that implies some psychiatric disorder."
"Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us."
"Nothing that's forced can ever be right, if it doesn't come naturally, leave it."
"My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics."
"Arsenal are a great team. But we lifted the trophy eight times in 11 years."
"Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express."
"He was certainly in a confused state. I used to go and visit him in Callan Park. They were really - to me they were the best poets those two writing in those days but it wasn't very encouraging because, well, they weren't getting far were they?"
"Only 4 percent of all the companies owned in Scotland have their head offices in Scotland."
"The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion."
"Fortunately for England, all her imports are raw materials."
"He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply."
"The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure."
"The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular."
"Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors that they are ready to repeat their lessons as often as we please."
"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."
"I met Hilary Vaughan at a Student Ball in 1944 and we married in the summer of 1946, as soon as I graduated."
"He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery."
"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."
"Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that."
"I remember in Shallow Grave I remember a few times when we'd only have to do one take. But when you did have to do more than one, you'd build on the one you'd done."
"I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory."
"My manager and my agents, they go over my contracts."
"The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt."
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