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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding."
"A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing."
"There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive."
"Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only."
"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."
"I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering."
"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."
"The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, these are just some of the people who threatened to sue if we used their songs."
""Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics."
"The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God."
"Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable."
"I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own."
"The daily chocolate left Will in high spirits, so that some days he believed he could wheel with the gulls that fished the foaming water close to shore. Now that he felt so free, it came to him that the corner of England, which up till now had been his whole universe, was in fact only a scrap of a boundless realm."
"In the morning he was lying dead on one of the beds fully clothed. He was dead. I got the impression he wanted to go, and I must have killed him. I can't remember strangling him. I just sat there shocked."
"The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer but rather what they miss."
"I got involved in script development from the beginning. It was nice to see how a film gets made right from the beginning. It was quite hands-on for me."
"Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up."
"A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker."
"It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn."
"I'm a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online."
"Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory."
"I am really rather like a beautiful Jersey cow, I have the same pathetic droop to the corners of my eyes."
"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there."
"A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task."
"I played against the Brazilians in '82, who were definitely the best team never to have won the World Cup."
"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."
"And I was asked if I would come and help with the recovery of this great British company, Cable and Wireless, and I'm delighted to become part of the new and very talented management that have been brought in to that company as well."
"I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence."
"We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love."
"When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive."
"Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids."
"I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century."
"He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply."
"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
"No, I'm not Shirley the girl, I'm the woman on MTV with the big boots."
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