Scottish Author Quotes

He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

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

John Cunningham Geikie

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

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

Outer space is, fundamentally, familiar. It's only the night sky, without the earth beneath your feet.

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

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.

There is nothing sorer to the spirit than falling below what one's lover thinks of one.

Naomi Mitchison

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.

You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.

There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.

Alistair MacLean

Most men have a sunny spot to which they look back in their existence, as most have an impossible future, to attain which all their energies are exerted, and their resources employed. The difference between these visionary scenes is this, that they think a good deal of the latter, but talk a good deal of the former.

George Whyte-Melville

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

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

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

For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life.

Isabella Fyvie Mayo

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.

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

Science is an ideal of the method of nature, and the production of that ideal is a true creation.

Samuel Morison Brown

The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down.

Taste is, in general, considered as that faculty of the human mind by which we perceive and enjoy whatever is beautiful or sublime in the works of nature or art.

Archibald Alison

The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.

Alexander Smith

You mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese-toasted, mostly-and woke up again, and here I were.

Robert Louis Stevenson