Scottish Author Quotes

Arthur Conan Doyle

Robert Louis Stevenson

Walter Scott

J. M. Barrie

Iain Banks

Irvine Welsh

Alistair MacLean

I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever comes between us.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.

There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him.

It is so seldom that a young fellow has any inclination for the company of an old man...

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

Storys to rede ar delitabill,
Suppos that thai be nocht bot fabill.

No one can tell, when two people walk closely together, what unconscious communication one mind may have with another

We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.

Now spring returns; but not to me returns
The vernal joy my better years have known;
Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,
And all the joys of life with health have flown.

He read the great stone Book whereon is writ The riddle of the world from age to age; Knew the fair marvels of the Zodiac, The stars and their processions; had by heart The elemental truths of chemistry. And zealously, within a mental maze, As dense as that which covered Rosamond, His teacher guarded him against the creeds.

Robert Williams Buchanan

On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.

Jane Welsh Carlyle

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast.
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While like the eagle free
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

Allan Cunningham

"Who affirms that crystals are alive?" I affirm it, let who will deny: Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive, Wane and wither; I have seen them die.

It is richt facil and eith gait, I the tell,
Forto discend and pas on down to hell:
The blak gettis of Pluto, and that dirk way,
Standis evir oppin and patent nycht and day;
Bot tharfra to return agane on hyght,
And heir abufe recovir this aris licht,
That is difficil wark, thar lawbour lyis.

I cannot help thinking his hypotheses are like inverted pyramids - a great deal resting on very little.

John Cunningham Geikie

The truth is the Tree of Life knows no seasons. High up among its branches spring warbles all the year; and they are only the poor pensioners underneath who count the months, and tell an autumn and a winter.

Louers be war and tak gude heid about Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine. I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout Quhome ye may traist to haue trew lufe agane.

Robert Henryson

On ilk beugh till embrace Writtin in a bill was O Dowglass, O Dowglass Tender and trewe!

Richard Holland

In the first days
Of my distracting grief, I found myself
As women wish to be who love their lords.

There will always be people like me, who believe that to ripple the pages of a printed book is a special experience, one that through the centuries has taken millions from the darkness into the light.

Quintin Jardine

"Mortality", in Songs of Israel (1824). Abraham Lincoln was fond of repeating these lines.

That nicht he sleipit never ane wink,
Bot still did on the Ladie think.

In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

Hugh MacDiarmid

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.

George MacDonald

In the beginning, said a Persian poet Allah took a rose, a lily, a dove, a serpent, a little honey, a Dead Sea apple, and a handful of clay. When he looked at the amalgram it was a woman.