Quotes About Scotland

I remember how, back in the 1980s, the Scottish Flow Country became an object of bemused controversy as rich celebrities and businessmen from south of the border acquired great tracts of this vast wetland in the far north in order to plant non-native conifer plantations that attract hefty tax breaks.

My favorite instrument is the snare drum. In Scotland, the snare drum is very prominent in Highland bands. The Scottish style of playing is in my blood. It's a very powerful instrument, but it can also be soothing, like velvet. It's a real challenge for composers.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Robert Frost had a house in Bennington, Vermont, and I had a friend, the poet Mary Ruefle, who was the caretaker of it when it was owned by Norman Lear, the TV producer. She got a grant to go to Scotland, and she had to be gone six or nine months, so I moved in, and my job was just to make sure the ravage didn't overtake the place.

In contrast to our sinking taste, there has been a revival of interest in verse drama in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. The movement has been slow but sure and, above all, modest in its demands.

hardly academically rigorous, revealed that English breakfast tea was misnamed in several ways. It came from India, Sri Lanka and Kenya, not England. It was imported to the British Isles by the Portuguese, who drank it in the afternoon. A Scotsman popularized its consumption at breakfast.

God bless the Scots and their puritan upbringing

But to most of the English, their history is just that, history. The contrast is with Scotland or Ireland, where every self-respecting adult considers themselves to belong to an unbroken tradition stretching back to the wearing of woad: oppressed peoples remember their history.

Where's your kilt? How about this, he said in a low voice. You don't ask me about haggis and bagpipes, and I won't ask you about garlic and Goodfellas.

'Outlander' is filmed mostly around Glasgow and the central belt of Scotland, so it's lovely for me because I get to go up and spend time in the place that I lived for three years. I've got a bunch of friends in the cast because a lot of them studied at the same college as I did, and I get to see my family, most of whom now live in Scotland.

I met Jack Bruce, one of my heroes, in a studio while doing some recording. England had just beat Scotland in a big football match and I saw Jack trying to break into this refrigerator in the lounge, drunk out of his brain, and I didn't know what to say.

I've been studying people - a homeless guy in Scotland, a blind accordion player in London - and they've inspired the lyrics I've been writing.

I've played in pipe bands in Scotland, and I've always played guitars and drums and stuff.

Feminism is so subjective. Because of the generational divide, and because we're living in a completely different world than someone in Africa or even Scotland.

The Scottish desire for independence is, to some extent, a fabrication. They want to identify themselves as Scots but still to be part of a, to enjoy the subsidy they get from being part of the kingdom.

But I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would not be content.

The Orkney islands and the Shetlands were in fact not surrendered to Scotland until the latter half of the sixteenth century, and Norwegian was still being spoken in the Shetlands at the end of the eighteenth century; the island accent is still much closer to Norwegian than to Scots or English.

We borrowed golf from Scotland as we borrowed whiskey. Not because it is Scottish, but because it is good.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

Johnstone railway station was small, neat and tidy, quite attractive. On the platforms, I noticed that the signs also had the name in Gaelic – 'Baile Iain', literally 'John's town'. It is a recent wheeze by the triumphant, all-conquering Scottish National Party to add the Gaelic name to every station in the whole of Scotland, despite the fact that most of these places never had a Gaelic name or people who ever spoke Gaelic.

was still a fine, persistent drizzle. There was a word in Scots for it—"smirr.

Because of EU rules,' Fox agreed. 'Which are about to end.' 'Bloody Brexit,' Morelli commented. 'Have you noticed any changes during your time in Scotland?' Fox went on. 'Changes?' 'A hardening of attitudes.' 'Racism, you mean? Not especially – it's a bigger issue in England, I think.

in Scotland. There was no need: the Scots had bigotry instead.

Chialer, c'était bon quand on perdait au foot, qu'on vous racontait des histoires d'animaux héroïques, ou en entendant "Flower of Scotland" après l'heure de fermeture.