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Scotland Quotes

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Scotland Quotes

“England has her Stratford, Scotland has her Alloway, and America, too, has her Dresden. For there, on August 11, 1833, was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World; an immense personality, -- unique, lovable, sublime; the peerless orator of all time, and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast, and, in words coined for the chosen few, told of the joys and sorrows, hopes, dreams, and fears of universal life; a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic; a philanthropist, real and genuine; a philosopher whose central theme was human love, -- who placed 'the holy hearth of home' higher than the altar of any god; an iconoclast, a builder -- a reformer, perfectly poised, absolutely honest, and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll.”

LoveReasonTruthAmericaJoyHopeFearNatureDreamsHonestyPoetHonorSorrowRespectEnglandPraisePhilosopherNobleGenuineFearlessChampionAdmirationLovingSublimeScotlandSuperstitionBiographyPhilanthropistDresdenValiantIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollOratorUniversal LifeIconoclastAllowayStratford
Book:Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation
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“Perhaps we live in a wilder place than we give ourselves credit for. Scots tend to be hardy perennials. It's as if we've evolved to withstand the challenging nature of our own country. And what's more, we've worked out how to shape it into a force for good. Out of necessity our homes feature clever ways to keep the outside out and the inside warm. Scotland's oldest towerhouses were built with slits for windows not just as a defensive measure, but to protect residents from the elements. Out of problems came solutions, even beauty. Our foreparents thought to install open fires to heat their homes then toiled to make them easy on the eye. Intricately carved wooden fireplaces and elaborate hearths that referenced Scottish folklore followed.”

LifeHomePastNatureColdWarmLiveScotlandCoorieSnug
Book:The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way
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“No lack of time, strength or money shall prevent me from doing anything that I want to do,” was Sarah Macnaughtan’s lifelong motto, first uttered in her younger years. A compassionate and daring woman ahead of her time who stood barely over 5 feet tall, Sarah let no obstacles become roadblocks in her life.”

LifeWomenCompassionCourageEnglandBraveryScotlandScottishOvercoming ObstaclesWw1
Book:The Strange Side of War: A Woman’s WWI Diary
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“Still I maintain that in the Scotland of to-day there yet remain some types which differ from the types set forth by Kailyard novelists. Of course I know that virtue which has long left London and the South still lingers about Ecclefechan, I know a Scotsman is a grave sententious man, oppressed with the difficulty of the jargon he is bound to speak, and weighed down by the sense of being a North Briton. I know he prays to Mr. Gladstone and Jehovah, time about, finds his amusement in comparing preachers, can read and write, buys newspapers, tells stories about ministers, and generally deports himself in a manner which would land a weaker man in idiocy within a fortnight.”

ScotlandScotsmanKailyardEcclefechanWilliam Gladstone
Book:Success
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“Refusing to collaborate with a transendental, totalising and finally determining sense of national identity, Scottish novelists since the 1980s have concentrated instead on individual moments of crisis, alienation and fragmentation, moments dramatising the loss and discovery of self, as they are articulated through the lives of some of thos conventionally excluded from the story of Scotland.”

Self DiscoveryScotlandAlienationExcludedScottish LiteratureScottish Novelists
Book:Studies in Scottish Fiction: 1945 to the Present
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“Intellectuals in all three regions called for the creation of a high-culture tongue that would be capable of functioning in all ways that English and French are wont to do. It would be more learned and, at the same time, more all-embracing. On the agenda were the following: lexical enrichment of the vernacular; a bridging of the dialects and the attainment of a form of linguistic unity by adopting a uniform, unified 'rational' orthography; the creation of scholarly, standardized dictionaries and grammars; and use of language as an arm in the struggle for cultural and, if possible, political autonomy.”

ScotlandAutonomyBrittanyScots LanguageOrthographyBretonHigh CultureOccitaniaOccitan
Book:Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920 - 1990
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“...it's perhaps time to admit that our perennial call to "work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation" has become something of an empty shibboleth. The petty, tribal, precriptive, censorious, identity-obsessed and philistine culture the SNP have created has left many older centrist heids reluctant to speak up over matters of simple common sense and public concern, conceding many of them not just to the right (with whom they are now occasionally driven to make common cause), but - far more dangerously - to the self-declared racists, sexists, homophobes and fascists who should represent our common enemy. The SNP are also, in their current incarnation, poor stewards of the independence dream. As we enter a pre-war era of economic uncertainty and shifting alliances, rediscovering it will be a far more sober and adult task than we have previously had to face. We first must decide what it is we mean by "better nation". It will have to be one with considerably more courage, genuine inclusivity and stomach for honest and civil debate than we currently demonstrate. It will require us to tackle the kinds of broad disadvantage that animate the electorate, as well as those narrow causes which excite our political and institutional leaders. It will require an Enlightenment-style revival of an artistic and intellectual meritocracy, one which can actively connect and draw on the talents of an increasingly diverse but distinctively Scottish society.”

CultureIndependenceIntellectScotlandMeritocracyIdentity PoliticsPolitical CulturePhilistinismScottish NationalismSnp
Book:Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland
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“Irrespective of the result of the General Election, I believe it will be possible to argue that Scotland has voted for more democratically accountable control over Scottish affairs. Scotland's inalienable right to self-determination includes the right to decide how to exercise that right. In the General Elections of October 1974, May 1979 and I believe in the forthcoming contest, and in the referendum on the Scotland Act, the Scottish people will have expressed the wish to remain in the United Kingdom, but with a substantial measure of Home Rule. Mrs. Thatcher would have no right to ignore that expression. Repeatedly stated, it would be the clear wish of the majority of the Scottish people. To deny it would be to say that of all the nations of the world today we had no national right to self-determination.”

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Book:Radical Scotland, April / May 1983
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“It was from my uncle I learned all that I know of the early history of Scotland—of Wallace and Bruce and Burns, of Blind Harry's history, of Scott, Ramsey, Tannahill, Hogg, and Fergusson. I can truly say in the words of Burns that there was then and there created in me a vein of Scottish prejudice (or patriotism) which will cease to exist only with life. Wallace, of course, was our hero. Everything heroic centered in him. Sad was the day when a wicked big boy at school told me that England was far larger than Scotland. I went to the uncle, who had the remedy. "Not at all, Naig; if Scotland were rolled out flat as England, Scotland would be the larger, but would you have the Highlands rolled down?" Oh, never! There was balm in Gilead for the wounded young patriot. Later the greater population of England was forced upon me, and again to the uncle I went. "Yes, Naig, seven to one, but there were more than that odds against us at Bannockburn." And again there was joy in my heart—joy that there were more English men there since the glory was the greater.”

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Book:Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
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“Te prometo mi amor y todo lo que poseo. Te prometo el primer bocado de mi carne y el primer sorbo de mi vino. A partir de este día solo tu nombre gritaré en la oscuridad de la noche, y por tus ojos sonreiré cada mañana; Yo seré un escudo para ti como tú eres el mío. No habrá entre nosotros ninguna palabra severa, ni ningún extraño oirá mi queja. Eres sangre de mi sangre y hueso de mi hueso. Te doy mi cuerpo para que podamos ser uno. Te doy mi espíritu para que podamos ser uno. Por encima de todo, te valoraré y te honraré, en esta vida y en la siguiente.”

NovelScotlandHighlanderWedding VowsEscociaElcorazóndelhighlanderRossalyncallum
Author:Rossalyn Callum
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“[…on a Corncrake call…] Fairy music is said to do this; to lead a man on in his confusion and drunkenness, to start, then stop, then begin again from another place, ever luring him on. This was not a beautiful music, it has to be said; hardly the art of fairies. Mind you, it could be a goblin carpenter, sawing away at his little workbench, if you’d had a few too many at the island disco and were of a fanciful mind.”

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Book:Findings
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“The calm skies that drifted above us lulled us into thinking this traversée would be smooth, but after several hours, the unsteady sea had taken its toll on me and after a light lunch and a brief swim in the open sea failed to do so, I attempted to remedy my mal de mer with rest. When I awoke, the sun had already set and the cool air and soft light of twilight helped recalibrate my disoriented thoughts. Although my seasickness had subsided, I lay starboard side facing the heavens - that were now a deep shade of purple - so as to not provoke another episode. We set to anchoring behind several large volcanic pillars just a stone’s-throw away from where the Tyrrhenian Sea kissed the east of the island. A handful of wishes scattered the skies as we approached the shores of Aci Trezza. As these stars traced their dying song across the void above, part of me felt ashamed for even entertaining the notion of wishing upon a star, but that voice was speedily silenced by words He had once shared with me in Scotland: “There is always some truth to fiction.”

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Author:RJ Arkhipov
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“The Castle Of Fear by Stewart Stafford The ghost sweated out from battlements, Appeared bleeding into full-bodied shape, The riddle of this phantom's raison d'être, Opaque as the spectre walked transparently. The armour that clad the body blinded eyes, The bagpipes it carried underarm deafened, The steely gaze froze the viewer on the spot, The sour odour it emitted made all nauseous. The wraith's left foot piteously dragged behind, Shuffling moans of pain, trailing the footsteps, Banshee shrieks, harrowing to all that heard, Dawn drained the strength, and it took flight. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Banksie, hi. What you up to?' 'Well, I'm going to be writing a book about whisky.' 'You're what?' 'I'm going to be writing a book about whisky. I've been, umm, you know, commissioned. To write a book about it. About whisky. Malt whisky, actually.' 'You're writing a book about whisky?' 'Yeah. It means I have to go all over Scotland, driving mostly, but taking other types of transport - ferries, planes, trains, that sort of thing - visiting distilleries and tasting malt whisky. With expenses, obviously.' 'You serious?' 'Course I'm serious!' 'Really?' 'Oh yeah.' '... Do you need any help with this?”

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Book:Raw Spirit
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“There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window facing each other your knees held in mine the blue plates in our laps the strawberries glistening in the hot sunlight we dipped them in sugar looking at each other not hurrying the feast for one to come the empty plates laid on the stone together with the two forks crossed and I bent towards you sweet in that air in my arms abandoned like a child from your eager mouth the taste of strawberries in my memory lean back again let me love you let the sun beat on our forgetfulness one hour of all the heat intense and summer lightning on the Kilpatrick hills let the storm wash the plates.”

LoversSummerPerfectionMemoryCommunionScotlandMomentBittersweetStrawberriesPast Love
Book:The Second Life: Selected Poems
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“Coll would be a heavenly place to be a child. There are beaches and boats, everyone knows you, it’s the kind of place you leave the door open. If you’re on the island, it’s know. If you catch the ferry to the mainland, well, that’s known about too. Should you have a mishap and require the air ambulance, a helicopter will have you in a Glasgow hospital in twenty minutes, by which time the island will have learned of your fate. A mere thirteen miles of single-track road separates ‘the unspoiled end’ from ‘God’s own country’. There are local land feuds, a limited supply of fresh water, and no high school. In effect, the children leave home when they are an unfledged eleven, to travel as boarders to the secondary school in Oban. Higher education and jobs take them yet farther afield. It seems a price to pay for an apparently idyllic island life, to lose your children so young.”

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Book:Findings
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