The Scots Language Quotes

Surely our language is the image of our soul ~ William Soutar

The Scots language is a mark of the distinctive identity of the Scottish people; and as such we should be concerned to preserve it, even if there were no other reason, because it is ours. This statement requires neither explanation nor apology. ~ J.Derrick McClure

It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home
perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know. ~ Ben Robertson

I did work a lot in Scots theatre, but I was never really successful in Scottish film or TV until I went down to London - and I had to go to the U.S. to get my big break. ~ Henry Ian Cusick

I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe ~ Mary, Queen Of Scots

The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis. ~ William Osler

The version of technology we live with most closely resembles the one that Scots such as James Watt organized and perfected. It rests on certain basic principles that the Scottish Enlightenment enshrined: common sense, experience as our best source of knowledge, and arriving at scientific laws by testing general hypotheses through individual experiment and trial and error. ~ Arthur Herman

There's something weird about the Scots. We are a troubled, slightly tortured race - the sense of the respectable outward character and, inside, the turmoil of something darker. ~ Philip Kerr

Believing a person deserves a defence is not the same as doing anything in your power to get him off scot-free. ~ Tammy Bruce

In such a wild, uncharted place the book of God was vital, for it nourished their spirit and laid boundaries for their conduct. Other subjects simply had no relevance. Trigonometry and calculus would not help them find their way among the mountain trails. Adam Smith's economics were of no consequence in the matter of planting corn and breeding cattle. Nor did they need the essays of Plato or the plays of Shakespeare to teach them how to shoot a rifle, or to make clothes from animal skins, or to clear away the wilderness with their own bare hands. ~ James Webb

Chloe kept her expression bland. He looked immensely pleased with himself this morning, and there was no way
she was letting him know she'd had even one nocturnal thought about him. "I can't remember," she said, blinking
guilelessly. "In fact, I slept so deeply I don't think I dreamt at
all."
"Indeed," he murmured. When he moved forward, she nearly jumped out of her skin, but he simply reached behind
her and pulled the door to her bedchamber shut.
Then backed her against it.
"Hey," she snapped.
"I sought but to give you a good morrow kiss, lass. 'Tis a Scots custom."
She craned her neck, scowling up at him, and gave him a look that said Yeah, right, nice try.
"A wee one. No tongue. I promise," he said, his lips curving faintly.
"You never give up, do you?"
"I never will, sweet. Doona you know that by now?"
Oooh, that was beginning to take on shades of her dream.
And he'd called her "sweet," a little endearment. She damped her mouth shut and shook her head. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Did I call them Laurel and Hardy? I meant sodding Romeo and Juliet. This is flirting, á la Gestapo underlings:

She: Oh, you are so strong and manly, M'sieur Thibaut. These knots you tie are so secure.

He: That is nothing. Look, I pull them so tight you cannot undo them. Try.

She: It is true, I cannot! Oh, pull them tighter!

He: Chérie, your wish is my command.

It is my ankles, not hers, which he is binding so tightly and with such masculine charm.

She: I shall have to call you in tomorrow morning as well, to do this task for me.

He: You must cross the cords, so, and knot them behind -

Me: Squeak! Squeak!

She: Shut up and write, ya wee skrikin' Scots piece o' shite.

Well, no, she did not use those exact words. But you get the idea. ~ Elizabeth Wein

Scots are Jocks,WelshmenTaffies, and Irishmen Paddies or Micks but?it is noticeable there is no similar designation for the English. ~ Anna Pavlova

I've never played Scots or got the chance to do my Scottish accent. I'm always trying it out in auditions, but they always say no. I'd love to act in a Scottish accent for once. ~ Callum Keith Rennie

To see justice done, men were prepared to take the law into their own hands. In the Carolinas, bands of vigilantes or Regulators crisscrossed the territory in the late 1760s, stamping out local hooligans and waging war on interlopers. This vigilante attitude was epitomized by a Scots Borders descendant from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, named Captain William Lynch. He ruled as virtual dictator of his county, punishing wrongdoers and warning lawless elements that "we will inflict such corporal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained." "Lynch's Law," and the punishments and hangings it inflicted, also became part of American culture - an ugly part, but a legacy of a harsh world and a harsh, unforgiving people. ~ Arthur Herman

I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots as a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work. ~ William Shakespeare

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath. ~ C.S. Lewis

You [Scots] come of a race of men the very wind of whose name has swept to the ultimate seas. ~ James M. Barrie

Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don't think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin. ~ Elizabeth Wein

I come from a very critical culture. You know the Scots. They're always saying: 'Oh, no. It will never work. You'll never amount to anything. You've got to know your place in the world.' ~ Craig Ferguson

I was a good soldier in the British Army. I was born in a very, very poor family. And I enlisted to escape hunger. But my officers were Scottish and they loved me. The Scots are good, you know. ~ Idi Amin

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America. ~ Barack Obama

Some men prayed for life and some for death, in languages as varied as their uniforms - the Dutch and Germans and the Scots and French and English tangled side by side, for all men looked alike when they were dying. ~ Susanna Kearsley

WINTER

Puir laboureris and busy husbandmen,
Went wet and weary in the fen;
The silly sheep and their little herd-groomis
Lurkis under lea of bankis, wodes, and broomis,
And other dantit greater bestial,
Within their stabillis sesyt into stall,
Sic as mulis, horsis, oxen and kye,
Fed tuskit boaris, and fat swine in sty,
Sustainit were by manis governance
On harvest and simmeris purveyance. ~ Gawin Douglas

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory! Now 's the day and now 's the hour; See the front o' battle lour. ~ Robert Burns

He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve. ~ Nick Hornby

We can have enhanced devolution - greater powers in Scotland - but within the strength, security and stability of the United Kingdom, and I think that's what most Scots want. ~ Douglas Alexander

He had never once felt itchy, in the way that two connecting pieces of a jigsaw never felt itchy, as far as one could tell. If one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that jigsaw pieces had thoughts and feelings, then it was possible to imagine them saying to themselves, 'I'm going to stay here. Where else would I go?' And if another jigsaw piece came along, offering its tabs and blanks enticingly in an attempt to lure one of the pieces away, it would be easy to resist temptation. 'Look,' the object of the seducer's admiration would say. 'You're a bit of telephone box, and I'm the face of Mary, Queen of Scots. We just wouldn't look right together.' And that would be that. ~ Nick Hornby

It was some time ago - in the twelfth century, as you humani measure time - a man from the land of the Scots. I do not remember his name." Both Sophie and Josh instinctively knew that Hekate was lying. "What happened to him?" Sophie asked. "He died." There was a peculiar high-pitched giggle. ~ Michael Scott

As Scots, we certainly want change today, but the change the Nationalists offer is not the change we want or need. ~ Douglas Alexander

The Scots will do anything to beat the English or just to see them lose, but I've never bought into that really. ~ Gerard Butler

Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland? ~ Walter Scott

It is nice that what eventually became the late British Empire has not been ruled by an 'English' dynasty since the early eleventh century: since then a motley parade of Normans (Plantagenets), Welsh (Tudors), Scots (Stuarts), Dutch (House of Orange) and Germans (Hanoverians) have squatted on the imperial throne. No one much cared until the philological revolution and a paroxysm of English nationalism in World War I. House of Windsor rhymes with House of Schönbrunn or House of Versailes. ~ Benedict Anderson

Jamie let go of me. "Shut your mucky gob, man." He stepped close to our fearless leader in the dark, took hold of his jacket by the collar, and in a dead quiet voice that had gone dangerously Scots, threatened heatedly, "Talk like that again wi' these brave lassies listenin' an' Ah'll tear the filthy English tongue frae yer heid, so Ah will. ~ Elizabeth Wein

The Scots are a very tough people. They have drive-by headbuttings. In Glasgow a sweatband is considered a silencer. ~ Emo Philips

Wherever I may be
In the woods or in the fields
Whatever the hours of day
Be it dawn or the eventide
My heart still feels it yet
The eternal regret...
As I sink into my sleep
The absent one is near
Alone upon my couch
I feel his beloved touch
In work or in repose
We are foreverver close... ~ Mary, Queen Of Scots

We Scots have a fierce pride in the things we do that others can never appreciate. I am the British No. 1, but I would prefer to be the British No. 1 from Scotland every time. ~ Andy Murray

Past persons of Scottishness in contact with mastermind of supernatural persuasion in London, aka Agent Doom.'
Floote moved on to the third bit of paper.
" 'Lady K says Agent Doom assisted depraved Plan of Action. May have all been his idea.'
Moving on to the last one, he read out, "Summer permits Scots to expose more knee than lady of refinement should have to withstand. Hairmuffs much admired. Yours etc., Puff Bonnet. ~ Gail Carriger