“The Highlands: Where the people are wild, and the trees are wind-buckled, and there are lochs which mirror the sky.”
Source: The Highland Witch
“Alec moved his mouth over her neck and the top edge of her breasts. “You must really want me to heat you up.” A hint of humor sparkled through the deep velvet tone.
“To volcanic levels,” she replied.”
Source: Stone Cursed: Zodiac Shifters: Taurus
“The attempt to separate Lowland from Highland Scotland ignores the extent to which Lowland Scots are the descendants of Highlanders, and how many Lowland Scots, like Nan Shepherd, made the country's mountains the focus of their spiritual aspirations. 'Highlandism' is not simply the ersatz adoption of a stereotypical version of Scottish culture which is entirely unconnected with the reality of modern Scottish life: the Highlands are both the geographical and the historical backdrop with which 'Lowland' Scottish culture interacts.”
Source: The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence
“We filled our lungs with the cold, still air and forgot our small needs and worries. We had a sound roof to shelter us, peat and wood for warmth, milk, eggs and potatoes in plenty to keep us fed. Health and strength we knew to be enormous benefits they really are. We were free to open our minds and let the stark beauty of hill and moor and sky strike into us.”
Source: A Croft in the Hills
“One can go scarcely a mile in the mountains without finding one of the scenes of Ossian, one of the caves of Fingal, the traces of their passing, or the site of their tombs.”
Source: Promenade from Dieppe to the Mountains of Scotland
“Procrastination is not laziness—it’s fear disguised as delay.”
Source: The Procrastination Cure: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Living with Purpose
“In a flash it came to me - might not people who were forced to spend their working hours between walls like to hear about what went on in a hill-top croft, of how it was possible to get an immense amount of fun and satisfaction out of lifting loads of mud into a cart, even though your boots were leaking and you knew there was not enough in the kitty to buy another pair? Would they like to know about the way light could stream down a blue hillside on a spring noon, how a lark could suddenly leap into a pale, washed skye after a night of storm and make the air ring with song, of how it was possible to get by every sort of difficulty as long as there was this knowledge that you were all in it together, this solidarity with rock and sun and bird? I believed they would.”
Source: A Croft in the Hills
“They say we Highlanders take in dancin' wi’ our mother’s milk!” said Tam.
“You must have skipped your breakfast that day then!” said Souter Johnnie.”
Source: Tam: The Three Changelings
“The pipe-music filled the room with sound, until it seemed that the throbbing walls must burst asunder- or the very roof of the inn fly off, to release the pressure. The candle-light pranced around the room in a crazy reel of will-o’-the-wisps, distorted by the clouds of dust melting down from the ceiling like Hebridean mist. The Highlanders looked at each other in wild surmise, then started smashing tankards against the walls in time with the swirling strains of music, sending ale cascading up into the air, spattering the ceiling and soaking the revellers’ hair and plaids.”
Source: Tam: The Three Changelings
“Spring in the hills would confront the greatest artist with too vast a panorama. I doubt if he could ever capture it. For Spring there is more than colour; it is music and scent. The burns literally hum down the hillside, the trees have rhythm in their shaking. The smell of Spring in the hills is a blending of peaty thickness, bracken-mould, flowers' spicyness, and clean, quick purge of the wind. Down in the hollows anemones, bereft of smell, gleam in pale patches.”
Source: A Country Dweller's Years: Nature Writings by Jessie Kesson