Scottish Renaissance Quotes

Whilst wishing to be associated with the current renaissance in Scottish art, I am actually a recessionist and have only joined to see if that's where the real money is. ~ Michael Marra

She was not only a female, but a damned beautiful one.A gentleman would have turned away the moment he realized what was happening."

~Alex Kerr ~ Cecelia Mecca

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure. ~ Sara Sheridan

When Barlinnie's Prison doctor, Dr Danson, came to see Dingus, he turned in disgust at the state Dingus was left to lie in. Doctor Danson refused to treat him as he knew Dingus's injuries were life threatening, he told the top warden that Dingus would need to be rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for emergency surgery. The screws in the seg block refused to listen to the doctor, they pushed and manhandled their own doctor out of Dingus's cell and threatened him with a severe beating if he made anything public about Dingus's injuries. ~ Stephen Richards

His life had been ripped away from him without his being able to fight against it. That was difficult enough, but to know that the one woman that consumed his thoughts day and night, the one woman who captured his attention with a mere smile would never be his ...
It was beyond cruel. ~ Donna Grant

He cleared his throat. "I wish I could take back what I said." He looked away. "I behaved like a thoin aiseal."
"What does that mean?"
"A donkey's arse."
She glanced down at the furs, found herself fighting a smile. "And how do you pronounce that? I somehow suspect I may have need of that phrase again. ~ Shelly Thacker

No lack of time, strength or money shall prevent me from doing anything that I want to do," was Sarah Macnaughtan's lifelong motto, first uttered in her younger years. A compassionate and daring woman ahead of her time who stood barely over 5 feet tall, Sarah let no obstacles become roadblocks in her life. ~ Noel Marie Fletcher

We have a Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, both elected by fairer votes - involving proportional representation. ~ Charles Kennedy

The man peered through the doorway - a blond bearded man with steel blue eyes, who first considered her holding Niall's sword, and then Niall in her bed. She couldn't believe he would grin at them. The heathen. His friend was sick and could be dying and Gunnolf was grinning?
What kind of a friend did that?
"I should have known you would be in a lass' bed while I have been searching for you everywhere. Not to mention trying to locate our horses, and the lass we should be finding. Is the woman protecting you with your own sword, mon?" Gunnolf laughed.
"He was wounded and is now feverish. There is naught to jest about," Anora said harshly.
Gunnolf laughed again. "I hope you plan to wed the lass, Niall. She appears to be just the one for you. Every mon needs a woman who will fight to protect him. ~ Terry Spear

It was the sort of pub Alan liked, furnished with wall- to-wall forty-five-year-old gin-and-tonic drinkers. A notice on the wall behind the bar read: Please do not ask for credit, as a punch in the mouth often causes offence. ~ Barry Graham

The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads. ~ James K. Morrow

He shook his head and thought about it for a second. "Maybe I'm not straight? Can I still be straight when I'm sitting here looking into your eyes?" he asked. Maybe it was the alcohol talking or maybe he wasn't as straight as he thought he was.
"Yes. Absolutely." Cormag nodded and watched him closely.
"Even when I think they're so pretty? They are, you know. So many different shades of brown ... and a little green. Just a touch; not a lot. So pretty." He sighed happily, watching those dark eyes staring back at him in surprise. He lay his head on his arms, smiling at the way Cormag flushed in embarrassment and turned his full attention onto his bottle of beer.
"Wow, you are super drunk. ~ Elaine White

I waltzed into the hall with my escort of five screws like some rapper with his well-paid entourage. A fiendish looking, little bastard with blonde hair and a crooked nose came up to me and said, 'Okay, Holland, welcome to Shotts. Welcome to the man-eater! ~ Stephen Richards

He hadn't landed on the battlefield to save Christina, at least not entirely. He'd landed there because it was meant to be – because his destiny lay with a bonny woman who would capture his heart and show him honor and respect on a uniquely deep level that had been lost in the twenty-first century. ~ Amy Jarecki

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. ~ Michael Crichton

You can't make a renaissance person anymore, because the range of what you would need to do is just impossible. But you could actually assemble a renaissance team."7 The integrative thinkers rely on their "renaissance teams" to broaden salience, maintain sophisticated causality, and create a holistic architecture in their drive for creative resolution. ~ Roger L. Martin

Margaret bolted from his grasp and sat upright. "My lord. I may not be well schooled in these things, but I believe the proper way to make love to a woman is to kiss her, not...ah...what you were just doing."
A devilish grin stretched Colin's lips, and his eyes grew dark. "You want me to kiss you, wife?" He reached for her hand and tugged. "Come here. ~ Amy Jarecki

He'd made love to her four times now, he realized, but this was his first chance to truly look upon her body. She was every inch as lovely as he'd imagined, if not more. He felt a bit guilty, realizing he'd chastised her for sketching his likeness, when he'd been conjuring an image of her nude form nightly for weeks. The only difference was, he hadn't committed his fantasies to paper.
It would take a Renaissance master to capture this beauty. ~ Tessa Dare

If ye place yer hand in mine, ye're saying yes to all I plan to do to ye" - he jerked his chin to the Oriental rug ---" here on the floor in front of the hearth. I will love ye like no man in yer past ever has and like no man in yer future would ever dare to try. For ye are mine, beloved, and from this moment until our last, a part of us will belong to the other. ~ Vonnie Davis

But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything. ~ Ian Hamilton Finlay

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish. ~ James McAvoy

It is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages. And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks. Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time before they saw as much as their forerunners had done. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

A man from the wood. A stranger from afar. He will break the curse by a hundred kisses... ~ Jean M. Grant

Ah, in how many rooms, upon how many studio couches, among how many books, had they found their own love, their marriage, their life together, a life which, in spite of its many disasters, its total calamity indeed
and in spite too of any slight element of falsehood in its inception on her side, her marriage partly into the past, into her Anglo-Scottish ancestry, into the visioned empty ghost-whistling castles in Sutherland, into an emanation of gaunt lowland uncles chumbling shortbread at six o'clock in the morning
had not been without triumph. (p.210) ~ Malcolm Lowry

The light played across the planes of his strong hands and forearms, allowing her to note the minuscule shifting of muscles signaling his next move. His shapely fingers moved with practical ease, and he unclasped the belt. The kilt dropped. ~ Angela Quarles

The ancient triumph of Christianity proved to be the single greatest cultural transformation our world has ever seen.

Without it the entire history of Late Antiquity would not have happened as it did.

We would never have had the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, or modernity as we know it.

There could never have been a Matthew Arnold. Or any of the Victorian poets. Or any of the other authors of our canon: no Milton, no Shakespeare, no Chaucer.

We would have had none of our revered artists: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, or Rembrandt. And none of our brilliant composers: Mozart, Handel, or Bach.

To be sure, we would have had other Miltons, Michelangelos, and Mozarts in their places, and it is impossible to know whether these would have been better or worse.

But they would have been incalculably different. ~ Bart D. Ehrman

He lowered his gaze to her breasts. His tongue sneaking to the corner of his mouth, he traced his finger across her exposed flesh. "Make love with me, Lady Jane. ~ Amy Jarecki

She moved her hips, his manhood sliding between her wet thighs, rekindling the hot craving at her very core. "How can I bring you pleasure? ~ Amy Jarecki

So I guess the world is actually ending now!' tweeted a former Gawker editor, and the tone there is instructive: atavistic, a return to the site's early editorial voice, at once wide-eyed and over it, giddy and etherized, a jaded and pitiless amazement, the flat relentless tone that had seeped into the water of the internet, and if the internet had moved on since then, if that is no longer quite the voice of things, on this day it is having a renaissance. ~ Mark Doten

There wasn't a Scottish nationalist MP elected at any general election when we were outside the E.U. ~ Michael Gove

Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk's morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying. ~ Stephen Richards

Judge Ted Poe's critics - like the civil rights group the ACLU - argued to him the dangers of these ostentatious punishments, especially those that were carried out in public. They said it was no coincidence that public shaming had enjoyed such a renaissance in Mao's China and Hitler's Germany and the Ku Klux Klan's America - it destroys souls, brutalizing everyone, the onlookers included, dehumanizing them as much as the person being shamed. ~ Jon Ronson

She dragged the soft cloth up and up, the fabric tickling along his sensitized skin. He trembled. Never had he been so responsive to a woman's slightest touch. ~ Angela Quarles

I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists. ~ Ian McEwan

Maybe it's time to go back 2,000 years for a spiritual renaissance. If not, our days may be numbered and a terrible implosion is coming. There is no more middle ground. It is one or the other. ~ Joel C. Rosenberg

Had her ordeal addled her mind? She was on a horse with a wild Highlander going God knew where with men even he did not trust and yet she found it thrilling! ~ Margaret Mallory

Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of the human spirit to be free. ~ Anne Sullivan

I am here before you tonight to dedicate this administration to bringing a new renaissance of neighborhood life and community spirit, a renewal of confidence in the future of our city and a revival of opportunity for all Chicago. ~ Jane Byrne

Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education. ~ Prince Philip

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we're entering the Age of the Ass. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

Griff's pretty neat on his own. Scottish hedge! ~ Damon Suede

In the Scottish Orkneys, the little stone houses with their single large room and central hearth had an extraordinary range of built-in furniture. ~ Stephen Gardiner

So, teaching him only that which she loved, not that which she had been taught, Janet read to Gibbie of Jesus, and talked to him of Jesus, until at length his whole soul was full of the Man, of His doings, of His words, of His thoughts, of His life. Almost before he knew, he was trying to fashion his life after that of the Master.

Janet had no inclination to trouble her own head, or Gibbie's heart, with what men call the plan of salvation. It was enough to her to find that he followed her Master. ~ George MacDonald

Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment") ~ James Grant

I bet you don't have to be Spanish to be the Spanish Inquisition," said Adam. "I bet it's like Scottish eggs or American hamburgers. It just has to look Spanish. We've just got to make it look Spanish. Then everyone would know it's the Spanish Inquisition. ~ Terry Pratchett

I give ye my body to protect ye, my heart to love ye, and my soul for all eternity. I am yours. ~ Victoria Roberts

Just as not all butterflies produce a hurricane, not all outbreaks of bubonic plague produce a Renaissance. ~ Eric Weiner

I always wanted to be a renaissance woman, do as many things as I possibly can and hopefully do them well or don't do them at all. ~ Jill Scott

Another good image for the slight edge is Lady Justice, the blindfolded statue. The statue itself, of the woman holding the scales and sword to represent the idea of justice, has been around since the days of ancient Rome, but in those days it didn't wear a blindfold. That part wasn't added until the sixteenth century, during the renaissance in thinking that eventually gave birth to our modern ideas of representative democracy and universal human rights. The blindfold doesn't imply that justice is "blind," as people sometimes assume; its point is that true justice is impervious to external influence. ~ Jeff Olson

It'd be nice to be what they call a Renaissance man. ~ George Takei