Scottish Quotes

“You can cover a great deal of country in books. ”
― Andrew Lang

“You can only chase a butterfly for so long.”
― Jane Yolen, Prince Across the Water

“I'M SCOTTISH!”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o' sunny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the poet, in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e'e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gi'es to me.”
― Robert Burns

“It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.”
― Diana Gabaldon, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel

“Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie! ”
― Robert Burns

“Most lasses like it when a man kills the bugs. Along with reaching high places and giving sexual pleasure, it's one of the few universally popular qualities we have on offer.”
― Tessa Dare, When a Scot Ties the Knot

“Ah fuckin hate the way some American cunts call lassies cunts. Fuckin offensive, that shite.”
― Irvine Welsh, Dead Men's Trousers

“If ye canna see the bright side o' life, polish the dull side”
― Christina Dodd, Some Enchanted Evening

“Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.”
― Elizabeth Wein, The Pearl Thief

“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!”
― Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl

“He who lies down with dogs shall rise with fleas”
― Christina Dodd, Some Enchanted Evening

“An old liar told me here
To think ahead and save my money.
I should have spent it on ribbons.
I should have learned the tune my dead grandfather played
When the daft wife heard him resounding
In the deep pine woods in early November.”
― Menzies McKillop

“Being a tourist in your own country opens up parts of Scotland we never knew existed.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“I [...] suggest considering Byron as a Scottish poet – I say ’Scottish’, not ’Scots’, since he wrote in English. The one poet of his time with whom he could be considered to be in competition, a poet of whom he spoke invariably with the highest respect, was Sir Walter Scott. I have always seen, or imagined that I saw, in busts of the two poets, a certain resemblance in the shape of the head. The comparison does honour to Byron, and when you examine the two faces, there is no further resemblance. Were one a person who liked to have busts about, a bust of Scott would be something one could live with. There is an air of nobility about that head, an air of magnanimity, and of that inner and perhaps unconscious serenity that belongs to great writers who are also great men. But Byron – that pudgy face suggesting a tendency to corpulence, that weakly sensual mouth, that restless triviality of expression, and worst of all that blind look of the self-conscious beauty; the bust of Byron is that of a man who was every inch the touring tragedian. Yet it was by being so thoroughgoing an actor that Byron arrived at a kind of knowledge: of the world outside, which he had to learn something about in order to play his role in it, and of that part of himself which was his role. Superficial knowledge, of course: but accurate so far as it went.

Of a Scottish quality in Byron’s poetry, I shall speak when I come to Don Juan. But there is a very important part of the Byronic make-up which may appropriately be mentioned before considering his poetry, for which I think his Scottish antecedence provided the material. That is his peculiar diabolism, his delight in posing as a damned creature – and in providing evidence for his damnation in a rather horrifying way. Now, the diabolism of Byron is very different from anything that the Romantic Agony (as Mr Praz calls it) produced in Catholic countries. And I do not think it is easily derived from the comfortable compromise between Christianity and paganism arrived at in England and characteristically English. It could come only from the religious background of a people steeped in Calvinistic theology.”
― T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets

“Byron’s diabolism, if indeed it deserves the name, was of a mixed type. He shared, to some extent, Shelley’s Promethean attitude, and the Romantic passion for Liberty; and this passion, which inspired his more political outbursts, combined with the image of himself as a man of action to bring about the Greek adventure. And his Promethean attitude merges into a Satanic (Miltonic) attitude. The romantic conception of Milton’s Satan is semi-Promethean, and also contemplates Pride as a virtue. It would be difficult to say whether Byron was a proud man, or a man who liked to pose as a proud man – the possibility of the two attitudes being combined in the same person does not make them any less dissimilar in the abstract. Byron was certainly a vain man, in quite simple ways:

I can’t complain, whose ancestors are there,
Erneis, Radulphus – eight-and-forty manors
(If that my memory doth not greatly err)
Were their reward for following Billy’s banners.

His sense of damnation was also mitigated by a touch of unreality: to a man so occupied with himself and with the figure he was cutting nothing outside could be altogether real. It is therefore impossible to make out of his diabolism anything coherent or rational. He was able to have it both ways, it seems; and to think of himself both as an individual isolated and superior to other men because of his own crimes, and as a naturally good and generous nature distorted by the crimes committed against it by others. It is this inconsistent creature that turns up as the Giaour, the Corsair, Lara, Manfred and Cain; only as Don Juan does he get nearer to the truth about himself. But in this strange composition of attitudes and beliefs the element that seems to me most real and deep is that of a perversion of the Calvinist faith of his mother’s ancestors.”
― T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets

“More and more, I longed for the brighter world I once knew. A world in which it was easier to convince myself of a power stronger than evil.”
― Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard from THE SEAFORTH HEIRESS: LADY OF THE LAST PROPHECY

“William Morris, " Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“It's the combination of country air and no phone reception that does it for me.
If I want to stay inside my lochside cabin cooried in on a dreich day with a trashy magazine there's no stopping me.
The same goes for getting up early, pulling back the curtains and feeling the morning rays on my face.
Then it might be the perfect opportunity for hill running - either observing or taking part.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“If the best things in life are free, the second-best things cost only a handful of pennies.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“Coorie believes in looking out for ways to make the most of what's around us, creating coorie on the cheap is easy.
An added bonus of many of these coorie activities is that they force us to slow down and ask deeper questions about where we are going and where we have been.
They also encourage collaboration, whether that's spending time with our nieces and nephews baking cakes, taking our dogs for a walk, combing the beach for shells or chatting to older generations about the history of our country.
There are countless ways to embody coorie into your days at work, days off, nights in the city and nights out in the wild.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“Everyone needs a space in which they can hide from the world.
But it's not always easy to have one in your house.
The ideal scenario is to have a room away from the main thoroughfare of a home - and that's where a garden room comes in handy.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“Humans + fire + food = happiness”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“Time for breakfast, lads!" Hamish crowed, smiling at the massive glass bowl layered with raspberries, toasted oatmeal, crowdie, and honey. It was easy to see why Dad and the cook might be mad. This dessert was a work of art.”
― Elizabeth Lim, A Twisted Tale Anthology

“My, I could love ya 'til the sun rises, lassie. But I dinnae think it'd ever be enough.”
― Kyrstie Nickles, Fire on Fire

“Lupin: “I don’t even think I’m Irish! I have a tail!”
Puck: “That’s Manx. They’re Scottish.”
Lupin: “Well, then, I have ears!”
Puck: “Scottish Folds are also Scottish.”
Lupin: “Why are Scottish cats dropping body parts left and right?”
Puck: “HOLD ON—am I Scottish?”
― Georgia Dunn, Lupin Leaps In: A Breaking Cat News Adventure

“Feed me, I’m Scottish!”
― Georgia Dunn, Lupin Leaps In: A Breaking Cat News Adventure

“Very few have a good opinion of the English, their funny traditions or Englishness. I, personally, have the highest opinion of them..”
― Gordon Roddick

“I seek above all things to bring men and women to God's mercy-seat.”
― John Buchan, Witch Wood

“It portends," said Mr. Proudfoot, whom food did not mellow, "that our pure and reformed Kirk of Scotland is linked more than ever with sectaries and antinomians and those, like the bloody and deceitful Cromwell, that would defile the milk of the Word with the sour whey of their human inventions. What avails a triumphant Kirk if its doctrine be sullied?”
― John Buchan, Witch Wood