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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"A forest of these trees is a spectacle too much for one man to see."
"So the question is, First, Whether the civil magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their conscience, and if they will not to punish them in their goods, liberties, or lives? this we hold in the negative."
"Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable."
"A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one."
"If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give."
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts - for support rather than for illumination."
"You don't say to a university professor who is immersed in a particular subject that they should get a life. They are encouraged to enjoy their subject and to pass it on."
"To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes."
"Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species."
"Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom."
"Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence."
"It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this."
"I don't have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I've done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that's mostly what I'm offered."
"Can you look forward to the future of our country and imagine any state of things in which, with slavery still existing, we should be assured of permanent peace? I cannot."
"Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart."
"I think that practising the law, particularly litigation, and particularly in Glasgow, has always been difficult enough without adding to it by having problems with professional colleagues or former colleagues."
"No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men."
"Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers."
"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us."
"We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well."
"Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man, but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity."
"We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us."
"The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature."
"At the end of the day, that's what a family is - a group of different people who accept each other."
"You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside."
"It is time we in Scotland put England in its proper place and instead of our leaning on England and taking inspiration from her, we should lean and turn to Europe, for it is there our future prosperity lies."
"For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?"
"Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?"
"The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion."
"Hearing is a form of touch. You feel it through your body, and sometimes it almost hits your face."
"Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt."
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