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Scotland Quotes

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Scotland Quotes

“He was waiting there for her beside the pool - a great black horse with shoulders like polished ebony and the water still streaming from his mane and tail. Morag stood and looked at him for a long moment. The great horse looked at her and never moved. “Will you trust me?” he had asked her the evening before, and she had trusted him then. She trusted him now, and so she walked towards him. She grasped his mane, and still the black horse never moved. She stood on a stone beside him, swung herself onto his back, and the black horse moved.”

HorseScotlandKelpieLoch NessMythologicalWater Horse
Book:The Kelpie's Pearls
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“She leaned a shoulder against the tunnel wall and thought of Kellan. A Dragon King. A dragon and a King. A gorgeous man who kissed as if there were no tomorrow and made love skillfully, adeptly. He could have let her die. Instead, he took her on a journey that opened her eyes to an entirely new world both beautiful and frightening.”

Paranormal RomanceIrelandScotlandFaeUrban Fantasy RomanceDragonShifters
Book:Darkest Flame: Part 4
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“In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch.”

ReligionIrelandScotlandFolkloreFaeriesCeltic Mythology
Book:Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World
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“But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country.”

ReligionDevilScotlandCalvinism
Author:James Robertson
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“I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!” I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!”

SuspenseHistorical FictionScotlandDark RomanceScottishCorsetsScotsman
Book:The BlueStocking Girl
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“Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment")”

ScotlandSupernaturalSuperstitionScottishScotsScotsman
Book:Reign of Terror: Great Victorian Horror Stories
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“The punishments meted out to the witches of North Berwick were recounted from generation to generation. Agnes Sampson, an elderly woman and a healer from Haddington, was the ringleader. She’d been kept in a scold’s bridle, a fearful instrument wrought of iron that enclosed the head. Four sharp blades penetrated the mouth of the witch to keep her quiet, and doubtless to ruin her tongue for a long time thereafter. In Agnes’ case, the bridle was chained to the wall of her cell, and therefore she was forced to endure countless days unable to speak, eat, or sleep, enduring the humiliation of opening her bowels or bladder without being able to attend to herself, and doubtless in a terrible amount of pain without a moment’s relief. After spending days thus, she confessed to raising the storm in partnership with the Devil, though I always thought that if I’d had to suffer days on end in a cell wearing such a monstrous instrument I’d have confessed to being Satan himself. No mercy was bestowed for Agnes’ confession, however – she was swiftly garrotted and burnt at the stake.”

ScotlandWitchesThe Lighthouse WitchesAgnes SampsonHaddingtonNorth Berwick
Author:C J Cooke
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“Any self respecting Scot knows that a good tartan is the solution to everything: it tells you where you are, where you belong, who your friends and family are. Forget the Vikings: those guys just can"t hold a candle to a delicious battle-weary warrior whose fighting skills and wicked sex appeal have spawned a thousand Scottish heartthrobs.”

ScotlandKiltsTartansScottish Men
Book:The Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance
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“Buchan's less polemical evaluation of 1932, with its focus on the historical context of Scott's writing, recognised the author's virtues, but did little to change the narrative of his limitations. Beside the reminder that the author 'knew his native land as no Scotsman had ever known it before', the insight that Scott's popularity and its international extent 'has had a paralysing effect' on his critical study sounded no warning to critics determined to mark themselves separate from Scotland's supposed cultural and literary provincialism.”

ScotlandProvincialismWalter ScottThomas CarlyleJohn BuchanEdwin Muir
Book:The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature
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“Billy Rankin is a true Glasgow rock legend. He has everything going for him: he's a brilliant guitarist, he writes killer songs, he's worked with the best, toured the world and he is one handsome-looking chap. I know all of this because Billy told me.”

GuitarScotlandRockNazarethGlasgowMark RiceBilly RankinRobert Fields
Book:Minstrels, Poets and Vagabonds: A History of Rock Music in Glasgow
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“He went on thus to call over names celebrated in Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own pen. In fact, I saw a great part of the border country spread out before me, and could trace the scenes of those poems and romances which had, in a manner, bewitched the world. I gazed about me for a time with mute surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I beheld a mere succession of gray waving hills, line beyond line, as far as my eye could reach; monotonous in their aspect, and so destitute of trees, that one could almost see a stout fly walking along their profile; and the far-famed Tweed appeared a naked stream, flowing between bare hills, without a tree or thicket on its banks; and yet, such had been the magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, that it had a greater charm for me than the richest scenery I beheld in England. I could not help giving utterance to my thoughts. Scott hummed for a moment to himself, and looked grave; he had no idea of having his muse complimented at the expense of his native hills. "It may be partiality," said he, at length; "but to my eye, these gray hills and all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest gray hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die!”

PoetryScotlandSir Walter Scott
Book:Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
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“Martha said it over and over to herself: "Scotland is bounded on the south by England, on the east by the rising sun, on the north by the Arory-bory-Alice, and on the west by Eternity." ...She repeated the boundaries of Scotland with the same satisfaction as she repeated the rivers of Spain. Up to her University days she carried the conviction that there was something about Scotland in the Bible.”

EternityScotlandRising SunAurora BorealisMartha Ironside
Book:The Quarry Wood
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“Scotland's passage from a mainly pastoral and agrarian society to a commercial and industrial one was brutal, rapid and relentless. In that transition, an entire peasant class, the cottars - perhaps as much as half of the rural population - was lost forever. They and tens of thousands of even poorer people were forced off the land across the Lowlands, Highlands and islands. They ended up in towns, cities and planned villages, they worked in mills, mines, quarries and iron works, or they emigrated to other parts of the world, or became soldiers, sailors, engineers, administrators and merchants in the service of the British Empire or the companies that thrived under its bellicose protection. Many prospered, many did not.”

CommerceScotlandBritish EmpireClearancePastoralIndustrialisationAgrarianHighland ClearancesUrbanisation
Book:Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland
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“For years the Church of Scotland, the Established Church, had been tearing itself apart. Two key issues dominated: patronage - the right of landowners to appoint and even force ministers on an unwilling congregation - and the interference of the state in church affairs. On one side were the Moderates, supporters of patronage, friends of the lairds, and, according to an earlier General Assembly report, often 'inattentive to the interests of religion'... The rival faction, the Evangelicals, opposed patronage, wanted complete church independence, and insisted on a far stricter interpretation of religious doctrine. So entrenched were the divisions that it brought the Disruption of 1843 - perhaps 'the most momentous single event of the nineteenth century' - with 470 ministers out of 1,200, plus their elders, congregations and 400 schoolteachers breaking away to create the Free Church.”

ScotlandPatronageEvangelicalsChurch Of ScotlandLairdsLandownersFree ChurchThe Disruption1843
Book:'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863
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“Her back pressed against his chest, slick with sweat and tremblin’ with exhaustion, but still unyieldin’. “Damn ye,” Alyssa gasped between clenched teeth, her voice sharp as the ache twistin’ through her belly. “If I dinnae hate ye by the time this is done, I’ll eat my plaid.” Tryss’s breath hitched in a laugh. “Well, that’s nae very nice. Why say such things tae me when I love ye so?”

RomanceScotlandHistorical RomanceBanterEnemies To Lovers RomanceMistaken IdentityFierce WomenLairdsScottish Highlands Romance
Book:The Tartan Swap: A Highland Clan War Romance
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“The [Second World] war may thus have acted as a forcing-bed, bringing to somewhat speedier development what was already securely rooted in the circumstances of our nation; and in this sense it may, perhaps, be said that: "The Scottish Renaissance was conceived in the First World War and sprang into lusty life in the Second World War.”

ScotlandSecond World WarFirst World WarScottish Renaissance
Book:The New Scotland: 17 Chapters on Scottish Reconstruction
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“Later in February NatureScot published a report, Anticipating and Mitigating Projected Climate-driven Increases in Extreme Drought in Scotland, 2021 - 2040. Extreme drought events, the writers warned, could increase from an average of one every 20 years to one every three, and could also last up to three months longer than they have in the past. Water scarcity could impact crop yields, drinking water supplies, peat bogs and other wetland ecosystems.”

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Book:Waters of Life: Fighting for Scotland’s Beavers
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“Beginning with the Adams family and the making of classical Edinburgh, through the creation of the mercantile palaces of Glasgow and ending in the work of the brilliant and forlorn Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architecture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a creative ambition that at times had an influence across Europe, yet failed to develop in the twentieth. It was a failure not of talent but of patronage: the wealth and wish for prestige of the landowners, the industrialists and the nobility had either gone or gone south.”

EuropeScotlandPatronageScottish ArchitectureCharles Rennie MackintoshRobert Adam
Book:Creating a Scottish Parliament
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“Returning to Jamaica, he had the sense of re-entering a place much less likely to alter in the coming years. Year in, year out, the cane fields produced their riches, the gangs swung their way through them, slaves were brought, seasoned, used up, replaced. Planters would go on making improvements to their great houses, to methods of production, and yes, to the conditions in which their slaves lived and worked, because it was in their interest to do so. But fundamentally the structure of life and of society did not change.”

SlaveryCommerceScotlandJamaicaPlantationsThe Caribbean
Book:Joseph Knight
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“Cultural nationalist feelings were expresses consistently by Scottish Committee members, but although sometimes linked to political aspirations, the Committee's to secure its anbitions, if at all possible, within a British structure is striking. Separation was only contemplated under direct pressure. Hostility within CEMA's Council to Scottish nationalism was marked by a general failure to distinguish between its political and cultural aspects.”

ScotlandCultural NationalismBritish Nationalism
Book:Scotland, CEMA and the Arts Council, 1919 - 1967: Background, Politics and Visual Art Policy
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“There was... a very palpable fear that involving the Scottish Committee of the Arts Council could lead to a more nationalistic festival, like the Scottish Theatre Festival envisaged by Bridie in October 1946. Some members of the Arts Council's Scottish Committee were considered 'too nationalistic and difficult to work with' by the London office.”

ScotlandCultural NationalismBritish NationalismArts Council Of Great BritainJames Bridie
Book:The Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-War Britain
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“Coorie has long been synonymous with nestling affectionately into a loved one, but only recently has it entered everyday parlance as a way to describe a scene. One equally warm and comforting where a cosy room lit by a flickering fire provides refuge from the banshee wind and horizontal rain outside.”

ComfortComfortableWarmScotlandWordConceptCosyCoorieSnug
Book:The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way
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“The ideal coorie scene should reflect a balance of the outside and in. Bring to mind a day spent Munro-bagging or loch swimming, bookended by a bowl of something hot and nourishing as you dry off next to a heat source with a contended dog at your side. Don't forget smell: faint lanolin clinging to woollen blankets, cinnamon dissolving into porridge cooking slowly on the hob, the frosty pinch of winter air when you step into a Trossachs morning. If a King Creosote album is playing as you road trip across the humpbacked north-west Highlands then all the better. The more homegrown ingredients are added to the mix, the coorier life will be.”

LifeWarmHappyScotlandWordContentConceptCoorieSnug
Book:The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way
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“For some, this idea was a shade too close to the lifestyles our Nordic cousins. Hygge and lagom, the Danish and Swedish movements of living well. But while these movements laid the groundwork for a similar trend to emerge in Scotland, coorie has some obvious differences. Where hygge is concerned with the pursuit of happiness through candles, coffee and togetherness, coorie seeks to make the most of what comes from Scotland to feel satisfied. Lagom is the art of balancing frugality and fairness to create a balanced existence. Coorie takes into account being kind to the earth and our wallets, but can also extend to premium experiences once in a while. Crucially, neither of these Scandinavian lifestyle approaches took their starting point from what is dug out of the earth. Coorie is more than simply being cosy. Sure, it is linked, but more importantly it focuses on working out how to be in tune with our surroundings to evoke that feeling.”

NatureWarmHappyScotlandWordContentConceptCosyCoorieSnug
Book:The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way
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“I noticed that as I drove through the defaced and suffering patches of country which still persist between Glasgow and Hamilton and Airdrie and Motherwell, no scents from hedges and fields streamed into the open car. ...it was as if in this region nature no longer breathed, or gave out at most the chill dank mineral breath of coal and iron. The air itself had a synthetic taste, the taste of a food substitute, and seemed to be merely an up-to-date by-product of local industry. The forlorn villages looked like dismembered bits of towns brutally hacked off, and with the raw edges left nakedly exposed. The towns themselves, on the other hand, were like villages on a nightmare scale, which after endless building had never managed to produce what looked like a street, and had no centre of any kind. One could not say that these places were flying asunder, for there was no sign of anything holding them together. They were merely a great number of houses jumbled together in a wilderness of grime, coal-dust and brick, under a blackish-grey synthetic sky.”

ScotlandThe DepressionWest Central Scotland
Book:Scottish Journey
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“The problem seemed especially important to the Scot in 1938. Never before had he so needed to summon up his strength of character and remember his traditions. No country was more badly hit by the economic changes between the wars... The shipping of men was our speciality, and for the first time probably in Scotland's history the younger generation had of necessity to look at its own country and see what could be done about it... A first duty was the articulation of Scottish problems to the Scot and the firing of his mind and heart to the need of his generation... to interpret, and where possible, dramatize the growing points in Scottish life... using the cinema to maintain the national will.”

ScotlandDocumentary1938The DepressionFilms Of Scotland
Book:Grierson on Documentary
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“Scotland had no need of a 'resistant nationalism' precisely because it was an imperial nation engaged in projecting its national culture to the world. The historical problem of Scotland's 'absent nationalism' in the nineteenth century is a non-problem because far from lacking a nationalism, Scottish nationalism was vigorously engaged on imposing itself wherever Scots had achieved a determining or a significant role within the territory of the British Empire. Scottish nationalism did not need to assert itself within the British state because the 'world was its field', and its aim was to make Scotland the spiritual core of the imperial project.”

ScotlandBritish EmpireScottish Nationalism
Book:The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence
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