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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us."
"God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."
"The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke, there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire."
"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."
"Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank You for this place in which we dwell, for the love accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare us to our friends, soften us to our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us strength to endure that which is to come that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another. We beseech of you this help and mercy for Christ's sake."
"My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad."
"I never drew a picture of anything that was before me but always from fancy, a sure sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I illustrated my lack of real feeling for art by a very early speech: 'Mama,' said I, 'I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?"
"All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
"Without kindness there can be no true joy."
"Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books."
"Our principal writers have nearly all been fortunate in escaping regular education."
"Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another."
"Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious."
"We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties."
"Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself."
"But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offense, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself."
"The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye."
"The more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much."
"We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it."
"The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer."
"Macaulay is well for awhile but one wouldn't live under Niagara."
"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking."
"Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species."
"I wish I were with some of the wild people that run in the woods, and know nothing about accomplishments!"
"To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity."
"Violence is always the last option, but if that time comes, it is the ONLY option."
"Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man."
"The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then."
"Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights."
"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."
"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."
"Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested."
"Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly."
"No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence."
"The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted."
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