Scotland
Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a country forming the northernmost third of Great Britain. An independent kingdom until 1707, it is now a constituent part of United Kingdom with limited powers of self-government.
Quotes
- O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent;
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content.- Robert Burns, The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786), Stanza 20.
- From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas –
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!
Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand;
But we are exiles from our fathers' land.- "Canadian Boat Song", an anonymous poem first published in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, September 1829, and ostensibly translated from the Gaelic. There has been much debate as to the poem's authorship. [1]
- From its destitution of trees, Scotland was once a by-word; now it is a garden of beauty.
- Frederick Douglass, "Self-Made Men" (1872)
- From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes, a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.
- John Galt Ringan Gilhaize (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1823) vol. 3, p. 313.
- My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer.- Robert Burns, "My Heart's in the Highlands", line 1 (1790).
- I do not discuss the Scotch cases. They are not binding on us as authorities, though of the greatest service, as containing the opinions and arguments of able and accomplished lawyers.
- Bramwell, L.J., Johnson v. Raylton (1881), L. R. 7 Q. B. 449; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 222.
- O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!- Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto VI, Stanza 2.
- Of course, Scotsmen are not foreigners. They are fellow-subjects of ours, and they are in the same position as any other fellow-subjects, with the important exception that their system of jurisprudence differs in very important particulars from ours . . . and to call a Scotsman an English subject is a perfect absurdity.
- Higby, L.J., Mac Iver v. Burns (1895), L. R. 2 C. D. [1895], p. 637; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 221-222.
- A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist, who does not love Scotland better than truth.
- Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England. It is seeing the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk.
- Samuel Johnson in conversation with Mrs. Thrale, April 8, 1778. Cited from James Boswell Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 914.
- 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 sweet - and breaks the heart.- Hugh MacDiarmid, The Little White Rose.
- I will venture to say, there is no country existing which is at present more flourishing; no people whose general condition is better, or whose rights and liberties are more firmly secured.
- Lord President, Downie's Case (1794), 24 How. St. Tr. 187; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 222.
- It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.
- Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Volume I, p. 15.
- That knuckle-end of England—that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur.
- Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Volume II, p. 17.
- [Upon King James VI's coronation as King of Scots] Sirrah! Ye are God's vassal; there are twa kingdoms in Scotland; there is Christ Jesus the King of the Kirk, whose subject King James VI is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member.
- Andrew Melville in Klieforth and Munro's The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights: A History of Liberty and Freedom from the Ancient Celts to the New Millenium, page 199.
- The side of my family that comes from Scotland, hell, they didn’t even worry about fighting people outside of Scotland. Highlanders and lowlanders just fought the hell out of each other.
- Tim Wise, "The Pathology of Privilege: Racism" (2008), Media Education Foundation.
- NEVER forget that we are the bastard people of a mongrel nation.
- William McIllvaney, 1992 [2]
- We’re a mongrel nation and proud and the Aryans can fuck off.
- Tommy Sheppard, MP for Edinburgh East, 2017 [3]
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 692-93.
- Give me but one hour of Scotland,
Let me see it ere I die.- William E. Aytoun, Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers—Charles Edward at Versailles, line 111.
- Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots
Frae Maiden Kirk to Johnny Groat's.- Robert Burns, On Capt. Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland.
- It's guid to be merry and wise,
It's guid to be honest and true,
It's guid to support Caledonia's cause,
And bide by the buff and the blue!- Robert Burns, Here's a Health to Them that's Awa'.
- Only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on't, in the world, than they are. And for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there [Virginia] for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.
- George Chapman, Eastward Ho, Act III, scene 2. Written by Chapman, Jonson, Marston. James I was offended at the reflexion on Scotchmen and the authors were threatened with imprisonment. Extract now found only in a few editions.
- The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride;
True is the charge, nor by themselves denied.
Are they not then in strictest reason clear,
Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?- Charles Churchill, Prophecy of Famine, line 195.
- The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high-road that leads him to England.
- Samuel Johnson, Bowell's Life of Johnson, Volume II, Chapter V. 1763.
- In all my travels I never met with any one Scotchman but what was a man of sense. I believe everybody of that country that has any, leaves it as fast as they can.
- Francis Lockier, Scotchmen.
- Now the summer's in prime
Wi' the flowers richly blooming,
And the wild mountain thyme
A' the moorlands perfuming.
To own dear native scenes
Let us journey together,
Where glad innocence reigns
'Mang the braes o' Balquhither.- Robert Tannahill, The Braes o' Balquhither
- In short, he and the Scotch have no way of redeeming the credit of their understandings, but by avowing that they have been consummate villains. Stavano bene; per star meglio, stanno qui.
- Horace Walpole, To the Rev. William Mason (Aug. 2, or 6, 1778).