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Quotes by Scottish Authors

"The pressures are intense, because the rewards for success and the penalty for failure are more and more."


"I have followed holiness, I have taught truth, and I have been most in the main things; not that I thought the things concerning our times little, but that I thought none could do anything to purpose in God's great and public matters, till they were right in their conditions."

"A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord."

"Past tears are present strength."

"For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred."

"To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive."

"Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."

"Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state."

"There does not seem to be that collegiality I referred to, there seems to be much more of a them versus us attitude, rather than we all have a role to play in this process so let's get on with it."

"Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue."

"One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God."

"As I have tried to show, science, in producing the airplane and the wireless, has created a new international political environment to which governments must adjust their foreign policies."

"She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again."

"To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow; His chance tonight, it maybe thine tomorrow."

"In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude."

"She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made-in other and higher words, after the will of God."

"Mrs Beaumont shrugged. 'Dougie travelled light in life,' she said. 'He knew it was people who were important."

"There have been a lot of exercises and I've had to force myself to go out for walks even when I didn't feel like it, but apart from that, I am a lot better."

"I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of kindness and compassion."

"If I was starting off now, I would probably have taken one or two different turnings along the way."

"Boldness and decision command, often even in evil, the respect and concurrence of mankind."

"Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God not of the answer."

"Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw."

"There is hardly a limit to the knowledge and sympathy a man may have in respect of the finest things, and yet be a fool. Sympathy is not harmony. A man may be a poet even, and speak with the tongue of an angel, and yet be a very bad fool."

"Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content in their Father."

"Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you."

"There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined stones."

"How few, since the foundation of the world, have found themselves in a position environed with public perils so numerous, oppressed with responsibilities so high and solemn, as yourself!"

"We might give her presents, tell some tales, but would she ever be able to really understand what the journey had been like for us?"

"When the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century brought a rapid increase in wealth, the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth they were creating was conceded only after riots and strikes."

"That's a difficult question, because to consider yourself a rebel is sort of ridiculous."

"My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there."

"Prices have stayed up because people in control of supply decided they could keep them up."

"The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject."

"To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years and to take rank not as a prophet but as an unteachable brat well birched and none the wiser."

"The record industry is still pissed off that other people are making money off their business, even if it promotes their products and increases their sales. I think they're still mad about radio."

"There are even more statues of Robert Burns than of any other figure in world literature. Indeed if we discount figures of religion, then only Christopher Columbus has more statues than he worldwide."

"Starbucks is my main fix and it's usually you people working in there - sometimes they're actually shaking. It just makes me feel horrendous because I've been in that situation."

"We met in Cracker. I played a maniac fan who murders a policeman and she did my makeup. I thought anyone interested in me looking like that must have genuinely liked me."

"The establishment, the newspapers, they try to create something called Scottish literature, but when people are actually going to write, they are not going to necessarily prescribe to that, they'll write what they feel."
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