8 inspiring quotes about the landscape of Scotland's

The Cullin mountain range, Isle of Skye. Picture: Creative Commons

The unique landscape of Scotland is very important to Scottish writers.

It has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for a great number poets and novelists.

We have chosen some of the best quotations about Scotland’s scenery, celebrating the magnificence of the Highlands and the delights of the Lowlands.

The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

From “My Heart’s in the Highlands”

Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scottish poet

The Caringorm mountains in winter. Picture: Contributed

Ye lover of the picturesque, if ye wish to drown your grief,

Take my advice and visit the ancient town of Crieff.

From “Beautiful Crieff”

William Topaz McGonagall (1825-1902), Scottish poet

From the lone shieling of the misty island

Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas

Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,

And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!

Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand;

But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

From the “Canadian Boat Song”, Anonymous. Translated from Gaelic

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,

Land of my sires! what mortal hand

Can e’er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand!

From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805), Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), Scottish novelist

How beautiful is Dunfermline seen from the Ferry Hills, its grand old abbey towering over all, seeming to hallow the city and to lend a charm and dignity to the lowliest tenement... What Benares is to the Hindu, Mecca to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that is Dunfermline to me.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1918), Scottish industrialist and philanthropist

Scotland small?

Our multiform, our infinite Scotland SMALL?

Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner to a fool who cries ‘Nothing but heather!’

From “Scotland small?”, Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), Scottish poet

Staring into a Scottish landscape, I have often asked myself why – in spite of all appearances – bracken, rocks, man and sea are at some level one.

Neal Ascherson, Scottish journalist and writer

let the sun beat

on our forgetfulness

one hour of all

the heat intense

and summer lightning

on the Kilpatrick hills

From “Strawberries”,Edwin Morgan (1920-2010), Scottish poet