Scottish Quotations

For so long as one hundred men remain alive,
we shall never under any conditions submit to the
domination of the English. It is not for glory or riches
or honours that we fight, but only for liberty, which
no good man will consent to lose but with his life.

THE DECLARATION OF ARBROATH, 1320

This is my country,
The land that begat me,
These windy spaces
Are surely my own.
and those who toil here
In the sweat of their faces
Are flesh of my flesh
And bone of my bone.
-Sir Alexander Gray

Give me but one hour of Scotland,
Let me see it ere I die.
- William Edmondstoune Aytoun

"Scottish by birth, British by law,
Highlander by the grace of God"
Anon

" No one in Scotland can escape from the past.
It is everywhere, haunting like a ghost."
Geddes MacGregor

" To a Scot, the past clings like sand to wet feet,
and is carried about as a burden.
The many ghosts are always a part of them, inescapable."
Geddes MacGregor

The Scots Character is Forged in Granite
That is no Timid Reed. Shaken by the Wind.

Many's the men who've battled foe
Many the number slain
Many the lads have fallen
though Scotland shall rise again.

" Glencoe. A gloomy, eerie place, a valley of sorrow
hewn out of mountains of guilt."
Geddes MacGregor

For that is the mark of the Scots of all classes:
that he stands in an attitude towards the past
unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and
cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or
bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity
with the dead even to the twentieth generation.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands
and Lowlands together.
Alexander Smith

From the lone sheiling 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 hebridies.
Anon

Hours are Time's shafts,
and one comes winged with death.
- Motto, of the Scottish Clock, also found on the clock at Keir House, near Dunblane, Scotland, the seat of Sir -William Sterling Maxwell

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

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

Had Cain been Scot,
God would have changed his doom
Nor forced him wander,
but confine him home.
- John Cleveland

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

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