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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."
"Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the Everywhere into here."
"Surely of all 'rights of man', this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest."
"In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns."
"Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another."
"Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence, and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she, constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me, Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says "Daughter to me?"
"The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong."
"The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect."
"To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful."
"Truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity."
"I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good."
"So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
"That boy is talented. You don't develop those gifts in houses or in schools."
"If you can walk you can dance. Zimbabwe saying Music is well said to be the speech of angels."
"As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective."
"You can't trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can't trust you."
"It often horrified the English community that she spent her time with local farmers and horse traders, eccentrics and mystics, but she valued expertise over convention and had long believed if you were going to make discoveries in the world you must first quit your Englishness and open your eyes."
"I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support."
"I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own."
"It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus, to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult."
"The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature's own heart - all else is wind in comparison."
"I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are."
"I want to tell you a growing conviction with me, and that is that as we obey the leadings of the Spirit of God, we enable God to answer the prayers of other people. I mean that our lives, my life, is the answer to someone's prayer, prayed perhaps centuries ago.It is more and more impossible to me to have programmes and plans because God alone has the plan, and our plans are only apt to hinder Him, and make it necessary for Him to break them up. I have the unspeakable knowledge that my life is the answer to prayers, and that God is blessing me and making me a blessing entirely of His sovereign grace and nothing to do with my merits, saving as I am bold enough to trust His leading and not the dictates of my own wisdom and common sense."
"It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless-he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value-a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag."
"To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and fall."
"You say "But He has not answered." He has He is so near to you that His silence is the answer. His silence is big with terrific meaning that you cannot understand yet but presently you will."
"The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting."
"Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind."
"We arc the miracle of miracles the great inscrutable mystery of God."
"Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness."
"A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything."
"Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream."
"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."
"It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning."
"The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God's Word."
"In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into."
"She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk."
"Never say you will pray about a thing pray about it."
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