Quotes by Scottish/Scotland authors (page 34)

"Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?"

"Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart"

"There is nothing which any way pertaineth to the worship of God left to the determination of human laws"

"The Lord Jesus will be revealed mightily, and will make bare his holy Arm, as well in the confusion of Antichrist, as in the conversion of the Jews, before the last judgment, and the end of all things"

George Gillespie, Theologian

"Reformation ends not in contemplation, but in action"

George Gillespie, Theologian

"The public! the public! how many fools does it require to make the public?"

Thomas Chalmers, Clergyman

"War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time"

John Hay Beith, Playwright

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other"

Walter Elliot, Politician

"I saw him... at peace in my armchair. I remember wishing he could stay in peace like that forever. I had a feeling of easing his burden with my strength"

Dennis Nilsen, Criminal

"When I went out on tour as Bing Hitler I would hook up with Lenny and we'd get drunk together. He was always very supportive. He was a big star and a lot of what he said to me had power and impact. Apart from that, I just like him"

Craig Ferguson, Comedian

"They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best"

Craig Ferguson, Comedian

"I am reasonably happy. I didn't find Jesus or anything like that. Part of it is that I just feel that I could go home. I did not feel like that for a long time, but I could go back now"

Craig Ferguson, Comedian

"Each coming together of man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure; each winning should necessitate a fresh wooing"

Marie Carmichael Stopes, Author

"There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities"

Adam Ferguson, Philosopher

"You are talking to a man who can only play a plastic keyboard. Give me anything weighted and I've had it. I haven't got the strength in my fingers to push them down. So I don't get a lot of expression on the keyboard"

Midge Ure, Musician

"In the music industry, you meet some not very nice people, some very strange characters"

Midge Ure, Musician

"Reading a poem aloud to an audience is gestural as much as precise"

Douglas Dunn, Poet

"I've always thought my poems told stories"

Douglas Dunn, Poet

"A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem"

Douglas Dunn, Poet

"Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design"

Adam Ferguson, Philosopher

"You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time"

John Knox, Clergyman

"Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective"

John Buchan, Politician

"We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves"

John Buchan, Politician

"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there"

John Buchan, Politician

"He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply"

John Buchan, Politician

"Gentleness corrects whatever is offensive in our manner"

Hugh Blair, Theologian

"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations"

James Mackintosh, Judge

"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that"

R. D. Laing, Psychologist

"It was a great time to be making music because everything else was changing"

Gordon Waller, Musician

"The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boasting; but that's an expression of insecurity, I think, of a lack of confidence"

Douglas Dunn, Poet

"There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance"

George Gillespie, Theologian

"I don't lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it"

Dennis Nilsen, Criminal

"When I stopped drinking, it was only because I thought if I don't stop, I'm going to die"

Craig Ferguson, Comedian

Page 34 of 46

Quotes by Scottish authors