Quotes & Sayings About Scots

The archetypal dwelling of the American frontier, the log cabin, was in fact a Scots development, if not invention. The word itself, cabine, meant any sort of rude enclosure or hut, made of stone and dirt in Scotland, or sod and mud in Ireland. — Arthur Herman

This reference to the Scots side of her ancestry is the first of two visual explorations into Tori Amos's diverse cultural past. As is the case for many of us, Tori's ancestry is a mix of races and religions, philosophies and professions, fortunes and foibles. What to some may seem like a family tree grown wild and untamed is actually a mighty oak that has weathered life's many storms and can still put out a rare and beautiful blossom like Tori. — Kevyn Aucoin

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

Here's tae us. Wha's like us?" "Damned few," she replied in broad Scots, "and they're all deid. — Diana Gabaldon

The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad. — George Orwell

Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance." "Religion in that case," Jamie ventured. "Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn't really about whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters - many of them Scots - replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again. — Alexander McCall Smith

The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself. — Alistair Cooke

As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. They were puzzled by the Scots' antipathy, given the Falklands war and the strong militaristic history of the Highlands and elsewhere. — Charles Kennedy

Most of the first voluntary Irish immigrants came from Ulster in the north of Ireland. These immigrants were generally, although not exclusively, Protestants. They were known as "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots Irish, — Ryan Hackney

[On being told Mary, Queen of Scots, was taller than she:] Then she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low. — Elizabeth I

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

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

When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent -
Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,
The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore
- he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis.
Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils. — Brigid Brophy

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

Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free. — Francois Rabelais

It was time to take the best bits from them all and build something delicious: the spirituality of the Hindus, the community spirit and family ties of the Muslims, the ancient wisdom of the Chinese, the love of freedom and equality of the Afro-Caribbeans, the work ethic of the Jews, the bloody-mindedness and wry humour of the Australians, the blarney of the Irish, the passion of the Scots, the unorthodoxy of the Welsh, combined with our own English love of justice, fair play and democracy. Put them all together and you had a vision for the future, a direction, which Bokononism could exploit. — Bernard Hare

In my end is my beginning — Mary, Queen Of Scots

I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourists shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world - kilts, bagpipes, tam-o'-shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow sweaters with big diamond patterns, sacks of haggis - and how little anyone but a Scot would want them. Let — Bill Bryson

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

She'd dreamed of him. Her imagination, unfettered in her sleep, had featured him. He'd been gloriously naked and her hands had explored the whole of him, delighted to discover that the handsome man was even more magnificent without clothes.
Drumvagen might be set into the Scottish wilderness, but what furnished her with a great deal of knowledge she otherwise might not have had. She listened to the maids discussing their love lives with a frankness they never would have had they known she was eavesdropping. Then, there was the sight of the handsome Scots lads bathing in the sea.
The books she read from Mairi's library had strengthened her imagination, adding details otherwise missing from her personal experience. — Karen Ranney

Lady Jane Gray, who tho' inferior to her lovely Cousin the Queen of Scots, was yet an amiable young woman & famous for reading Greek while other people were hunting ... Whether she really understood that language or whether such a study proceeded only from an excess of vanity for which I beleive she was always rather remarkable, is uncertain. — Jane Austen

There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are similarly intertwined in Catalonia and Spain, in Ukraine and Russia. — Michael Ignatieff

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

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

The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes. ("Interim") — William S. Wilson

It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history. — Zaha Hadid

In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. — Kim Newman

group whose remarkably swift adaptation to slaveholding put them quickly into the front ranks of wealthy and powerful slaveholders. Scottish settlement took two distinct forms: Highlanders re-established their agricultural economy in the New World and built upon their experience as herdsmen to make their way into the slaveholding class. By contrast, the commercial activity of the Lowland Scots contributed incalculably to the expansion of slavery across the southern frontier before the Revolution. — James Oakes

He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds. — Bernard Cornwell

Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins. — James Barrett Reston

As Scots - like everyone else - we live in an increasingly inter-connected world that demands shared solutions to shared problems. Walking away from others have never been our way. Walking with others has been our heritage and still represents our best future. — Douglas Alexander

The emblem on the necktie reserved for the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews - The Vatican of golf - is of St. Andrew himself bearing the slatier cross on which, once he was captured at Patras, he was to be stretched before he was crucified.Only the Scots would have thought of celebrating a national game with the figure of a tortured saint. — Alistair Cooke

I think Shakespeare is like a dialect. If I heard a broad Scots accent, I'd probably struggle at first but then I'd start to look for words I recognise and I'd get the gist. I think Shakespeare is like that. — Ralph Fiennes

I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It's understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels. — Joanna Lumley

All this "confusion" came to an end twenty years after the Royal Visit, when two Bohemian brothers, claiming to be the illegitimate grandsons of Prince Charlie himself, appeared on the scene with their own tartan pattern book, portentously titled Vestiarum Scoticum. James and Charles Sobieski Stuart, as they called themselves, had selected seventy-five different setts, each linked to a specific clan, from a sixteenth-century manuscript they claimed had once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots's father confessor - although they could never quite produce the manuscript when others asked to see it. — Arthur Herman

What happened in 1603?" Grant asked, his mind still on Tyrrel. "We had the Scots tied to our tails for good." "Better than having them at our throats every five minutes. — Josephine Tey

Rue not my death. Rejoice at my repose, It was no death to me but to my woes. The bud was opened to let out the rose. The chain was loosed to let the captive go." - ROBERT SOUTHWELL ON MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS — J.T. Ellison

Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots - yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her. — Charles Kennedy

I don't know a lot about the Scots, but I'm aware they have beaten some of the English counties in the NCL and have gone close in other matches, — Justin Langer

When I was young, I read everything I could lay my hands on, but the Scots in my storybooks spent their time fighting glorious battles, rowing across lochs, or escaping over moors of purple heather. Even those Scots were hard to find. For at school, we recited poetry according to the set texts the teachers taught us. — Theresa Breslin

It with an E. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put my whole soul into it. Ruby Gillis told me coming home that the way I said the line, 'Now for my — L.M. Montgomery

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

In the letters section, a Scot reminds his readers of the 'Glorious Alliance' between France and Mary Queen of Scots, which explains why Scotland should not share the rabid Europhobia of Englishmen. — Bruno Latour

While the Roman Empire was overrun by waves not only of Ostrogoths, Vizigoths and even Goths, but also of Vandals (who destroyed works of art) and Huns (who destroyed everything and everybody, including Goths, Ostrogoths, Vizigoths and even Vandals), Britain was attacked by waves of Picts (and, of course, Scots) who had recently learnt how to climb the wall, and of Angles, Saxons and Jutes who, landing at Thanet, soon overran the country with fire (and, of course, the sword). — W.C. Sellar

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

Kidnapping is a national past time to these Scots and they do it for the sheer pleasure of making each other miserable. — Claire Robyns

famously, Scots are very interested in their past, real or invented, but who else is? — Jenny Wormald

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

Why are Scots so attracted to the secret world? Smiley wondered, not for the first time in his career. Ships' engineers, Colonial administrators, spies. . . . Their heretical Scottish history drew them to distant churches, he decided. "George! — John Le Carre

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

For generations comedians have made jokes about Scots-Irish in the South inter-breeding. "I am my own grandpa" and all that stuff; you know, because they all were marrying their first cousins. — Ishmael Reed

For the first time, Lake began to think there was something behind the Romans' reasoning when they built Hadrian's Wall to keep the Scots out of England. — Janet Elizabeth Henderson

Whoever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army, since there were French, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Sayonards, Lotharingians, Allemani, Bavarians, Normans, English, Scots, Aquitanians, Italians, Danes, Apulians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks and Armenians. — Fulcher Of Chartres

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

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

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

It is the foot-loose, those who have nothing to lose and much to gain, and (quite naturally) those who have not scrupulously kept all the laws - or who have felt the heavy hand of church discipline--who are most attracted to a new frontier. The first miners in California, the debtors sent to Georgia, the 'criminals' deported to Australia, were likewise held in scorn by upright stay-at-homes. What they made of themselves, and what their sons became, indicate that, for all the hard things said about them, they were hardly 'the scum of the nation. — James G. Leyburn

Sidheag could be quite crass, the result of having been raised by men, or Scots, or soldiers, or werewolves, or all four. — Gail Carriger

Mary was like a caged tiger in the first days of her captivity. Keen, alert, and watchful, she listened tensely each dawn for the key that unlocked her door. After breakfast she watched the road for messengers, pacing back and forth like a confined feline.
But no messengers ever came.
Elizabeth had abandoned her. Or forgotten her.
And the days passed.
Little by little, the Queen of Scots grew accustomed to her captivity. She no longer heard the key in the lock, or the footsteps outside her door. More often than not it was the maid's cheerful voice that woke her, along with the hand on Mary's shoulder and the delicious smells wafting from the breakfast tray. — Margaret George

In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. — Ian Rankin

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

I ken you want me off your porch and out of the settlement as weel. But I'll no' oblige you till you answer a few questions of my own." Her voice was cold as creek ice in January. "I don't have to." His blue eyes flashed a warning. "If you want tae be rid of me, you'll answer. Or I'll still be here come morning." She didn't doubt it. "You Scots are a stubborn lot." He grinned and rolled his eyes. "And you colonials are no'? — Laura Frantz

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

There is something so quiet and so industrious, something so Viking about the Scots. — Joanna Lumley

And so the Scots grew restless, moaning all the time as only they could. — A.J. Hartley

God bless the Scots and their puritan upbringing, — Jeffrey Archer

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

Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment") — James Grant

The Danes don't take themselves seriously at all and look for the joke in everything. Us Scots are on the same line of latitude and have the same amount of light, which may be why we have a similar sense of humour. — Jamie Sives

In sport, as in science, business, and diplomacy, as Scots we understand that we benefit from the deep and diverse partnerships that make up the United Kingdom. — Douglas Alexander

But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul. — Alexander McCall Smith

They saw the Scots coming up out of their burrows like raving women in their skirts, dying in ripples across the yellowish-brown soil. They saw the steady tread of the Hampshire's as though they had willingly embarked on a slow-motion dance from which they were content not to return. They saw men from every corner walking, powerless, into an engulfing storm. — Sebastian Faulks

Dealing with the Scots, my father had always said, was like trying to geld wildcats with your teeth, but luckily the wildcats spent much of their time fighting each other. Once — Bernard Cornwell

One cannot imagine Scots music and song without the contribution of Burns. — Len G. Murray

I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain's success - so for me there's no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation. — David Cameron

My roots are Scottish. My dad's parents are from Scotland, and my mum's dad is Scots. — Katharine Isabelle

But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term "Whig" had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called "Tories." Neither — Winston S. Churchill

Logan lowers his head close to mine. 'Just know this, Ivy Calhhoun,' he begins. 'If I werena a ghost I would open all door for you, properly. — Cindy Miles

Even the pious Scots, locked throughout history in a long-drawn-out battle with their arch-enemies the Scots, managed a few burnings to while away the long winter evenings. — Terry Pratchett

Talkin' like dogs fightin'," he explained. "Grrrr! Wuff!" He growled, shaking his head in illustration like a dog worrying a rat, and I saw Fergus's shoulders shake in suppressed hilarity. "Scots for sure," I said, trying not to laugh. — Diana Gabaldon

The cattle raid, the creach, was not only a test of leadership and honor, celebrated in bardic song. It also paid a tidy profit, when the clan could charge ransom to return the stolen cattle. The term in Scots was blackmail - mail being the word for "rent" or "tribute," and black the typical color of the Highlander's cattle. Blackmail determined the rhythm of life in many parts of the Highlands. Some observers estimated that at any given moment the average chief had half his warriors out stealing his neighbor's cattle, and the other half out recovering the cattle his neighbors had stolen from him. — Arthur Herman

Kenneth MacAlpin unifies the Picts and the Scots. — Frommers

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

God help England if she had no Scots to think for her. — George Bernard Shaw

This is perfect!" Gennie shouted over the motor as Grant's boat cut through the sea. "It feels like we could go all the way to Europe."
He laughed and ruffled her wind-tossed hair. "If you'd mentioned it before, I'd have put in a full tank of gas."
"Oh, don't be pracitcal-imagine it," she insisted. "We could be at sea for days and days."
"And nights." He bent over to catch the lobe of her ear between his teeth. "Full-mooned, shark-infested nights."
She gave a low laugh and slid her hands up his chest. "Who'll protect whom?"
"We Scots are too tough.Sharks probably prefer more tender-" his tongue dipped into her ear "-French delicacies. — Nora Roberts

Scots they're either nice or they're horrid and these two are horrid. The Scots wont like that Eamon, thats bordering on racism. Its not racism its ethnic criticism Bill. — Eamon Dunphy

That is, " Harry said, " because the world has never seen - in initiative, imagination, courage, and steadfastness - anything like the American fighting man. Not the Germans, the non-Germans, the semi-German Viennese, the British, the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Danish, or the Nepalese. You may in the future condemn us for it. You may continue to think that we are savage, disproportionate, and uncivilized. But we saved you the last time. And it is we, I guarantee you, will will liberate Paris and drive into Berlin. We don't like it. We don't like fighting and dying. But ... when it comes time for that, we are facile princeps, and will always be. We were born for it. The terrain of the New World educated us in it. That in America every man is a king assures us of it. — Mark Helprin

Both my parents are Scottish, and although I grew up in Canada after moving over, all of my family are proud to be Scots. — Callum Keith Rennie

When a slave must be executed, the slaves from those plantations nearby are brought to watch; a deterrent, aye? against future ill-considered action." "Indeed," Jamie said politely. "I believe that was the Crown's notion in executing my grandsire on Tower Hill after the Rising. Verra effective, too; all my relations have been quite well behaved since." I had lived long enough among Scots to appreciate the effects of that little jab. Jamie might have come at Campbell's request, but the grandson of the Old Fox did no man's bidding lightly - nor necessarily held English law in high regard. MacNeill had got the message, all right; the back of his neck flushed turkey-red, but Farquard Campbell looked amused. He uttered a short, dry laugh before turning round. — Diana Gabaldon

Where is Sin's plaid? (Lochlan)
Plaid cloth is for people of true Scots blood, Lochlan. They are not for half-blooded Sassenachs. (Aisleen)
(He had found Sin later that day, alone in their room. Sin had been sitting in the middle of the floor with his arm cut open while he let blood trail from the wound into a bowl.)
What are you doing? (Lochlan)
I'm trying to get rid of the English blood in me, but it doesn't look any different than yours. How can I make it go away when I can't find the difference? (Sin) — Kinley MacGregor

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind. — Winston S. Churchill

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

Never have I had such assistants to disrobe me, and never have I put off my clothes before such a company — Mary, Queen Of Scots

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

After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell. — Antonia Fraser

Everyone knows how creative the Scots are.
They're always sculpting, painting, singing songs, & writing plays.
They invented television, the telephone, & deep-fried Mars bars. — David Baillie

If global warming meant temperatures rose by one or two degrees, France would become a desert, which would be no bad thing. The Scots would grow wine and make buffalo mozzarella. — Michael O'Leary

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