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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"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."
"I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness."
"So high do these plants stand in the favour of the Chinese gardener, that he will cultivate them extensively, even against the wishes of his employer; and, in many instances, rather leave his situation than give up the growth of his favourite flower."
"I am such a pessimist that every project has surpassed what I envisioned."
"Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ."
"I don't lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it."
"When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage."
"In Great Britain the price of food is at a higher level than in any other country, and consequently, the British artisan labours at a disadvantage in proportion to the higher rate of his food."
"A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing."
"To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue."
"We measure our days out in steps of uncertainty not turning to see how far we've come. And peer down the highway from here to eternity and reach out for love on the run."
"Opinions are made to be changed or how is truth to be got at?"
"So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
"The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes."
"A drunkard is one thing, and a temperate man is quite another."
"Of whatsoever number a fleet of ships of war is composed, it is usually divided into three squadrons; and these, if numerous, are again separated into divisions."
"A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation."
"The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever."
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see."
"A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun."
"The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities."
"A long sea implies an uniform and steady motion of long and extensive waves; on the contrary, a short sea is when they run irregularly, broken, and interrupted; so as frequently to burst over a vessel's side or quarter."
"Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake."
"We ought, therefore, to lessen the price of food to our manufacturers, and place them more on a level with the manufacturers who have cheaper food, and also much lighter taxation."
"A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest."
"The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too."
"NATO and the EU have also agreed on permanent arrangements on consultation and cooperation between themselves."
"We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It's trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But there's no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a wind, that's my view."
"I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own."
"I believe that the organisers of this conference have chosen a very timely subject for our discussion - because the 21st century will confront us with an entirely new set of challenges."
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