Great Throughts Treasury

"Immortality! We bow before the very term. Immortality! Before its reason staggers, calculation reclines her tired head, and imagination folds her weary pinions. Immortality! It throws open the portals of the vast forever; it puts the crown of deathless destiny upon every human brow; it cries to every uncrowned king of men, “Live forever, crowned for the empire of a deathless destiny!”"

"Every clachan in Scotland is a hot-bed of scandal and malevolence."

"In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as ‘the bodie’. ‘What does he do, that man?’ you may ask, and the answer will be, ‘Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does – he’s juist a bodie!’"

"Mrs Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. ‘Ruin and murder,’ she said slowly; ‘and madness; and death at my nipple like a child! When will Ye be satisfied?’"

"To break a man’s spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he lives, send him slinking away animo castrato – for that is what it comes to – is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost – derives from it, indeed."

"When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he robbed him on the straight. When he was afraid of him he stabbed him on the fly."

"If a man’s success offends your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a recognised weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit. And (inversely) elevates his rival."

"The Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone is enough to make him so. For it is a scheme of personal salvation significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie. ‘At the Day of Judgment, my friends,’ said Mr. Struthers; at the Day of Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!’ Self-dependence was never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells."

"No man has a keener eye for behavior than the Scot."

"There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not so much as that; they’re owre canny for that to be said of them."

"They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the Green Shutters, sitting there dark and terrible, beneath the radiant arch of the dawn."