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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"History a distillation of rumor."
"Our ordinary and reasonable service to God may actually compete against our total surrender to Him."
"It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul than He has created. From every burden, from every anxiety, from all dread of shame or loss, even loss of love itself, that yoke will set us free."
"All work is seed sown. It grows and spreads and sows itself anew."
"Indeed, a man is rather being thought than thinking, when a new thought arises in his mind."
"I can't bear literary snobbery."
"Let each become all that he was created capable of being."
"If we don't value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?"
"I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil."
"Didn't young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?"
"Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is."
"When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God's throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people."
"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."
"I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's."
"I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That's not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It's just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn't completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that."
"No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things."
"Its easier to feel a little more spiritual with a couple of bucks in your pocket."
"Endurance is patience concentrated."
"Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning."
"Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all."
"People see what they expect to see."
"This is a sane wholesome practical working faith: That it is a man's business to do the will of God second that God himself takes on the care of that man and third that therefore that man ought never to be afraid of anything."
"We act like pagans in a crisis--only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God."
"Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think."
"No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes."
"It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally but of working wonders in a man's disposition."
"It is just the old way--that of obedience. If you have ever seen the Lord, if only from afar--if you have any vaguest suspicion that the Jew Jesus, who professed to have come from God, was a better man, a different man--one of your first duties must be to open your ears to His words and see whether they seem to you to be true. Then, if they do, to obey them with your whole strength and might. This is the way of life, which will lead a man out of its miseries into life indeed."
"A devil - "A power that lives against its life"."
"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen."
"The Lord's questions always reveal the true me to myself."
"Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it."
"If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else."
"There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was humbler."
"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words."
"When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine."
"However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures."
"No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left--I am here for God to send me where He will."
"I realized women and humor were linked very closely."
"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal."
"He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He's continually working out His ultimate perfection for you..."
"Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world."
"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all."
"A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus."
"What a blessed habit I have found my prayer list, morning by morning, it takes me via the Throne of all Grace straight to the intimate personal heart of each one mentioned here, and I know that He Who is not prescribed by time and geography answers immediately."
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