#scottish

The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boasting; but that's an expression of insecurity, I think, of a lack of confidence. ↗

— Douglas Dunn

#aspects #boasting #complacency #confidence #expression

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!” I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today! ↗

— Gwenn Wright

#dark-romance #historical-fiction #scotland #scotsman #scottish

It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch. ↗

— Diana Gabaldon

#epic #fraser #graphic-novel #outlander #romance

An old liar told me here To think ahead and save my money. I should have spent it on ribbons. I should have learned the tune my dead grandfather played When the daft wife heard him resounding In the deep pine woods in early November. ↗

— Menzies McKillop

#money #poetry #scottish #life

I think these movements and become them, here, In this room's stillness, none of them about, And relish them all-until I think of where Thrashed by a crook, the cursive adder writes Quick V's and Q's in the dust and rubs them out. from "Movements ↗

— Norman MacCaig

#scottish-poetry #nature

You can only chase a butterfly for so long. ↗

— Jane Yolen

#butterfly #chase #culloden #historical-fiction #jane-yolen

As soon as I got successful, the Scottish press started picking on me. It's something they reserve just for me. ↗

— Billy Connolly

#i #just #me #picking #press

Now that Janet and Frances were older, Grandpa would let them visit him in his study, where the parrot lived. Grandpa came from a long line of parrot-keeping men, and Polly’s predecessor, a white cockatoo, had fought with Wellington’s armies in the Napoleonic Wars. Janet’s father’s earliest memories were of the astonishing oaths known to this bird, who was then a hundred and two years old and spoke in ripe gamey accents long since gone from the world of men. Grandpa believed that there must be a fair number of such long-lived birds in Scotland—even perhaps in England—and it would have been a fine thing to have them all gathered in a great dining hall, invoking ghostly midshipmen and dragoons, violent drinkers and merry rhymesters, perhaps even occasionally a lady of refinement. This, he said, would afford a historical experience of rare value; indeed, ancient parrots should be fêted and cultivated as true archivists. ↗

— Elspeth Barker

#gothic #scottish #experience

Clearly, if it is sensible to hold a referendum on independence, it is crucial that we have one on marriage. It is the only way the country can move forward on this issue. Let all those who have a view on this subject place their trust in the Scottish people and let Scotland decide. ↗

— Keith O'Brien

#country #crucial #decide #forward #hold

The North American intellectual tradition began, I maintain, in the encounter of British Romanticism with assertive, pragmatic North American English - the Protestant plain style in both the U.S. and Canada, with its no-nonsense Scottish immigrants. ↗

— Camille Paglia

#assertive #began #both #british #canada