15 inspiring quotes from famous Scots

CONSIDERING its small size, Scotland has produced a great number of people who have made a significant contribution to the shaping of the world.

David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer.

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

Playwright and novelist. Creator of Peter Pan

“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.

“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 .

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

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.

“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!”

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