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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence."
"Next year, if no one gives me any work, that's fine. I'm not going to do well anyway. I'm not an actor, I'm just exploiting this industry."
"Happiness... consists in giving, and in serving others."
"The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God equally present all the time in every condition."
"Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin."
"I see no reason for giving the capital employed in agriculture greater protection than the capital vested in other branches of trade, manufacture, or commerce."
"I have got the best of both worlds; growing up in Edinburgh and now living outside Glasgow."
"I wrote five issues of that and got the sack. Actually, they paid me for eight, but they changed their minds about the direction and threw three issues out the window."
"I used to think I had to stay frozen in time. No amount of Botox will keep up."
"The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies."
"People go to see a film because it's a great story and it's visually exciting to watch."
"Only one in a thousand sits down in the midst of it all and says-I will watch my Father mend this. God must not be treated as a hospital for our broken "toys, but as our Father."
"A friend is a present you give to yourself."
"It's important, that spirit of youth, and when you're 16 that can get you kickstarted."
"Every noble crown is and on earth will ever be a crown of thorns."
"Sometimes people say to you that you should try to be in a bigger film, but it's the way it pans out."
"Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all."
"Sometimes a person's first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation."
"If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper."
"When you want something badly enough it's amazing what you'll ignore."
"It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom."
"What is called for is dignity. We need to set an example."
"If we were never depressed we should not be alive, it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed."
"Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it."
"And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody."
"One great effect of prayer is that it enables the soul to command the body. By obedience I make my body submissive to my soul but prayer puts my soul in command of my body."
"Our top story tonight: Famous TV dolphin flipper was arrested today on prostitution ring charges. He allegedly was seen transporting two 16 year olds across state line for immoral porpoises."
"There are a couple of things in there if we're constraining this discussion to horror here."
"The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only."
"Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion."
"Like some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him."
"The people who influence you are the people who believe in you."
"For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him."
"Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different."
"I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job."
"I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine."
"Writers have a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric. Everything you've heard is true."
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