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Scotland quotes

  • Quhen Alysaunder oure kyng wes dede, That Scotland led in lauche and le, Away wes sons of alle and brede, Off wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle; Oure gold wes changyd in to lede. Cryst, borne in to virgynyte, Succour Scotland, and remede, That stad is in perplexyte.

    -Anonymous
    c.1286  Lines said to have been written after the death of Alexander II of Scotland, the earliest extant piece of Scottish verse. Quoted in the Original Chronicle of  Andrew Wyntoun (c.1420), bk.7.

  • O ye'll tak the high road, and I'll tak the low road, And I'll be in Scotland afore ye, But me and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes, Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond.

    -Anonymous
      'The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond', chorus and stanza1. The author was a  Jacobite imprisoned in Carlisle.

  • In Scotland, land of the omnipotent No.

    - Alan Bold
      'A Memory of Death'.

  •    'Scotland! a queer country that, your honour!' 'So it is,' said I; 'a queerer country I never saw in all my life.' 'And a queer set of people, your honour.' 'So they are,'said I; 'a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would scarcely see in a summer's day.'

    - George Henry Borrow
      Wild Wales, ch.83.

  • Auld Scotland wants nae skinking wareThat jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu'prayer, Gie her a Haggis!

    - Robert Burns
      'To a Haggis', stanza 8.

  • It was a'for our rightfu' king, We left fair Scotland's strand.

    - Robert Burns
      'It was a' for our rightfu' king', stanza1.

  • It is Scotland's rightful heritage that its people should create a modern Parliament† This entire issue is above and beyond any political party.

    - Sir Sean Connery
      Speech in Edinburgh. In the Daily Record, 8 Sep.

  • We have waited nearly 300 years. My hope is that it will evolve with dignity and integrityand it will truly reflect the new voice of Scotland. My position on Scotland has never changed in 30-odd years. Scotland should be nothing less than an equal of other nations in the world.

    - Sir Sean Connery
      On the Scottish Parliament. In the Daily Telegraph, 27  Apr.

  • We look forward to the time when this moment will be seen as a turning point: the day when democracy was renewed in Scotland, when we revitalized our place in this our United Kingdom.

    - Donald Campbell Dewar
      Speech at the official opening of the Scottish Parliament, 1  Jul.

  • Time after time, on matters great and small, we are still standing on the sidelines, mutely accepting what is decided elsewhere instead of raising our voices and making our own choices. Scotland's much vaunted partnership of Jonah and the whale.

    -Winnie Ewing
    Quoted in Michael Russell (ed) Stop the World: The Autobiography of  Winnie Ewing (2004).

  •    Auld Reikie! wale o' ilka town That Scotland kens beneath the moon; Whare couthy chiels at e'ening meet Their bizzing craigs and mous to weet.

    - Edna Ferber
      'Auld Reikie,  A Poem'.

  • For the cleansing of that horror, if cleanse it they could, I would welcome the English in suzerainty over Scotland till the end of time. I would welcome the end of Braid Scots and Gaelic, our culture, our history, our nationhood under the heels of a Chinese army of occupation if it could cleanse the Glasgow slums, give a surety of food and playthe elementary right of every human beingto those people of the abyss†

    - Lewis Grassic Gibbon
      Scottish Scene,'Glasgow' (with Hugh MacDiarmid).

  • If there is writing on Hadrian's Wall, it reads that the English should leave Scotland to its own devices.

    - Simon Heffer
      Nor Shall My Sword:  The Reinventing of England.

  • For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's Land, Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      London: a Poem, l.9^10.

  • Oats. A grain, which in England isgenerally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      A Dictionary of the English Language.

  • Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark quoted in a letter to Boswell,7  Apr. Quoted in James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

  • I would rather have a Scot come from Scotland togovern the people of this kingdom well and justly, than that you should govern them ill in the sight of all the world.

    - Konrad Lorenz
       To his son, Louis, at Fontainebleau.

  • He canna Scotland see wha yet Canna see the Infinite, And Scotland in true scale to it.

    -Grieve
      A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, l.2527^9.

  • Lourd on my hert as winter lies The state that Scotland's in the day. Spring to the North has aye come slow But noo dour winter's like to stay For guid, And no'for guid!

    -Grieve
      To Circumjack Cencrastus, or The Curly Snake.

  • The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part Only the little white rose of Scotland That smells sharp and sweetand breaks the heart.

    -Grieve
      Stony Limits and other poems,'The Little White Rose'.

  • Scotland small? Our multiform, infinite Scotland small?

    -Grieve
      'Direadh'.

  • Mairg an t-so' i l a ch |' air fairge ian mo r  marbh na h-albann. Pity the eye that sees on the ocean the great dead bird of Scotland.

    - Sorley Gaelic name Somhairle MacGill-Eain MacLean
      'An t-Eilean','The Island'.

  • 'In Scotland,' Tavish muttered, picking up my bags,'the women dothehod carrying whilewe blokesretiretothe nearest pubto deliberate upon the role of labour in society.'

    - Katherine Neville
      A Calculated Risk.

  •    Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield!

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Marmion, canto 6, stanza 34.

  • We had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland, as far as national consequence is concerned, than remedy ourselves by even hinting the possibility of a rupture. But there is no harm in wishing Scotland tohavejust somuchill-nature, according toher own proverb, as may keep her good-nature from being abused.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Letters of Malachi Malagrowther on the Proposed Change of Currency, letter1.

  • It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to makethantobuy.Thetaylordoesnot attempttomakehis ownshoe†All ofthemfind itfor their interestto employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours and to purchase with a part of its produce†whatever else they have occasion for† What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom† Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?

    - Adam Smith
      An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.2.

  •    I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.

    - Rev Sydney Smith
      Letter to Lord Holland, [August]. In The Letters of Sydney Smith edited by Nowell C Smith (1953), vol.1.

  • The vice of meanness, condemned in every other country, is in Scotland translated into a virtue called 'thrift'.

    - David Thomson
      Nairn in Darkness and Light.

  • A symbol of all that's perfectly hideous about Scotland

    - Irvine Welsh
      On the poet Hugh MacDiarmid. In Scotland on Sunday, 28 Jan.

  • O flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again, That fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen And stood against him, proud Edward's army, And sent him homeward tae think again.

    - Roy Williamson
      'Flower of Scotland', stanza1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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