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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men tall."
"Hence a ship is said to head the sea, when her course is opposed to the setting or direction of the surges."
"Men often act knowingly against their interest."
"This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society."
"He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly."
"Choosing the right mask helps you... We went through many masks. It was very particular leather that as soon as you smudged it, you had to get a new one. We went through about 55 masks."
"I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?"
"I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace."
"Every time I show up to do something here it's considered a comeback. If I came into town and they didn't call it that, I'd be disappointed."
"I had no money nor friends to prepare for the trial till last night."
"Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."
"I think the reality is that, that money was probably badly spent."
"It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy."
"Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge."
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."
"When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it."
"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."
"When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer."
"At the present moment the people of England are only three-quarters fed, and the result of this improvement in the export of our manufactures would be, that they would be entirely fed."
"Their argument, and I think it's a correct one, is that they'll make more money from the trades and the hardcovers if nobody messes with the creative team."
"Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can't help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won't want to worry."
"There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic."
"When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me."
"On some peculiar pigmented cells found in two mosquitoes fed on malarial."
"It was quite instant that he wanted Harry's approval. Did you notice that? And the children sort of rescued him this time. It's a great turnabout. That's what happens as your children get older. They do things for you, and it's quite shocking when they do."
"The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, that never mused on sorrow but its own."
"Well, he doesn't make me laugh. I think I've got a fair sense of humour but I can't really see it in him. I've listened to his show on the radio on a Saturday morning, and that's a load of mince as well."
"There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it."
"Who hath not known ill fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue."
"No, no I'm not, no, but I just think... when people are naked it tells you a lot about their relationships."
"Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you."
"Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings."
"I was perceiving myself as good as a man or equal to a man and as powerful and I wanted to look ambiguous because I thought that was a very interesting statement to make through the media. And it certainly did cause quite a few ripples and interest and shock waves."
"All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing."
"There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why."
"A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldn't even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldn't at a moment's notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk."
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