15 inspiring quotes from famous Scots
![David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer.](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45922765.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65&enable=upscale)
![David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer.](/img/placeholder.png)
These have included people from a wide range of disciplines, such as poets, philosophers, novelists, artists, architects, engineers, explorers, doctors and scientists.
We take a look at 15 inspirational historical quotes by famous Scots.
J.M Barrie (1860 - 1937)
![Sir Walter Scott, portrait in his home in Abbosford. Picture: TSPL](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45923340.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65)
![Sir Walter Scott, portrait in his home in Abbosford. Picture: TSPL](/img/placeholder.png)
Playwright and novelist. Creator of Peter Pan
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Hide Ad“We are undoubtedly a sentimental people, and it sometimes plays havoc with that other celebrated sense of ours, the practical.”
Robert Burns (1759-96)
Poet and songwriter
![Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Postcard of photograph (probably by James Craig Annan, c1900) from the Annan Gallery, Glasgow.](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45922701.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65)
![Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Postcard of photograph (probably by James Craig Annan, c1900) from the Annan Gallery, Glasgow.](/img/placeholder.png)
“Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, ‘an honest man’s the noblest work o’ god’.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Historian and essayist
“A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.”
![Robert Louis Stevenson , author
.](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45923320.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65)
![Robert Louis Stevenson , author
.](/img/placeholder.png)
Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919)
Industrialist and philanthropist
“There is an unwritten law among the best workmen: ‘Thou shalt not take thy neighbour’s job’.”
Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)
![Sir Walter Scott, portrait in his home in Abbosford. Picture: TSPL](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45923340.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65)
![Sir Walter Scott, portrait in his home in Abbosford. Picture: TSPL](/img/placeholder.png)
Bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin
“A good gulp of whisky at bedtime - it’s not very scientific, but it helps.”
David Livingstone (1813-73) Missionary and explorer
(On central Africa): “The strangest thing I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-heartedness and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves.”
Charles Rennie MacKintosh (1868-1928) Architect and designer
![Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Postcard of photograph (probably by James Craig Annan, c1900) from the Annan Gallery, Glasgow.](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/legacy_elm_45922701.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65)
![Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Postcard of photograph (probably by James Craig Annan, c1900) from the Annan Gallery, Glasgow.](/img/placeholder.png)
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Hide Ad“Don’t meddle with other people’s ideas when you have all the work cut out of you in trying to express your own.”
Lady Frances Balfour (1858-1931)
Writer and suffragist
“Golf has ceased to be a peculiarly national game. It is now no longer a pastime for the impecunious Scot, armed with two of three clubs, and a feather ball, it has become a professional sport, pursued by devastating hordes of foreigners among whom the American tongue rises shrill and strident.”
Margaret Oliphant (1828-97)
Novelist and critic
“Life is no definite thing with a beginning and an end, a growth and a climax; but a basket of fragments, passages that lead to nothing, curious incidents which look of importance at first, but which crumble and break into pieces, dropping into ruins.”
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) Novelist and poet
“Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.”
Samuel Smiles (1812 - 1904) Social reformer and moralist
“That terrible Nobody! How much has he to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody that by all the world besides.”
Tobias Smollett (1721-71)
Novelist
“London is the devil’s drawing-room”.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
Novelist, poet and essayist
“For my own part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake”.
“Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes”.
James Thomson (1700-48)
Poet
“Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare!”