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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"More than anything else, I'd like to be an old man with a good face, like Hitchcock or Picasso."
"I cannot but be grieved to go from my native land, and especially from that part of it for whom and with whom I desired only to live; yet the dreadful apprehensions I have of what is coming upon this land may help to make me submissive to this providence, though more bitter."
"When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines."
"I've done nudity in lots of things before. It's something that's never particularly bothered me."
"Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colours on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin boy--'And at the same time, I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins' fate."
"Like the winds that we come we know not whence and blow whither soever they list, the forces of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin. They arise before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not the speculations of men."
"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn."
"The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck."
"Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man."
"He that can work is a born king of something."
"I am really rather like a beautiful Jersey cow, I have the same pathetic droop to the corners of my eyes."
"I left halfway through my third year to start Lipstick On Your Collar, which was the first thing I ever did."
"He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it."
"Unless it's done superbly, as in the Japanese film Gate of Hell, color can be a very distracting element."
"Hence a ship is said to head the sea, when her course is opposed to the setting or direction of the surges."
"Aim for the sky and you'll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you'll stay on the floor."
"If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place."
"History is the essence of innumerable biographies."
"There's one major difference between James Bond and me! He is able to sort out problems!"
"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
"I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff- box from an emperor."
"He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles."
"I certainly have no plans to leave London. It's a great town."
"There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books."
"I couldn't feel good about myself hanging out in Armani clothes when my girlfriend can't even pay her heating bill. I'd feel foul and I'd be embarrassed."
"I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I'm someone else."
"We are told that the first part of the process is to select the very smallest seeds from the smallest plants, which is not at all unlikely, but I cannot speak to the fact from my own observation."
"They all in general had putrid gums, the spots and lassitude, with weakness of their knees."
"In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many."
"I admit I'm being paid well, but it's no more than I deserve. After all, I've been screwed more times than a hooker."
"Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can't help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won't want to worry."
"That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise."
"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."
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