3621 quotes by scottish authors for you to enjoy

Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural world's most elegant phenomena. John Burnside

Natural World Will Hawk Know Most Stopped Anyone Flight Who Elegant Ever Watch Phenomena

Snow isn't just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grime of a Fife mining town but also of a kind of weary familiarity, a taken-for-granted quality to which our eyes are all too susceptible. John Burnside

Eyes Quality World Weary Too Our Our World Kind Mining Pretty Town Also Familiarity Snow Susceptible Just Senses Which Fife

This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, we require not only clean air and a steady climate, but also an abundance of meadows and woodlands, rivers and oceans, teeming with life and the mass existence of other living creatures. John Burnside

Life Truth Living Teeming Other Air Steady Only Clean Clean Air Rivers Abundance Mass Like Also Climate Oceans Repeated Existence Any Meadows Require Should Mantra Filling Creatures Living Creatures Chance

High Alpine meadows, like their near relatives prairie, desert and certain varieties of wetland, teach us to consider the world from a fresh perspective, to open our eyes and take account of what we have missed, reminding us that, in spite of our emphasis on the visual in everyday speech, we see so very little of the world. John Burnside

Eyes World Perspective Relatives Everyday Consider Our High Visual See Spite Take Open Emphasis Reminding Missed Like Fresh Prairie Very Account Meadows Little Us Certain Teach Desert Near Speech

Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art. John Burnside

Art Bird Illustration Sadly Always Been

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ourselves, and we can only do this by abandoning the old, grandiose, profit-seeking schemes so beloved of our masters and learning to till the soil, live to scale, and live within our means. John Burnside

Our ancestors went to the woods to find fuel; they set snares there for birds and gathered nuts and fungi. John Burnside

Birds Our Nuts Ancestors Find Snare Woods Fuel Set Gathered

It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key pollinators, the human population would collapse in less than a decade. John Burnside

Knowledge Key Insects Depend Our Collapse Would Without Continue Existence Than Decade Human Common Common Knowledge Human Population Less Population Now

With each passing decade, history becomes less real for us, less immediate and essential to our way of life, and so, like 'green' nature, more of a commodity or an advertising gimmick. John Burnside

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper. John Burnside

Work Time Mind Finished Down Enough Paper Several Some Poem Write Written Written Down Head Soon Longer Clears Piece Until Builds Were Lines Quite Quite Some Time Hold Register

A mad person isn't someone who sees what isn't there; he's someone who sees what is there but that others can't see. I really believe that. John Burnside

Believe Others Mad See Someone Sees He Person Really Who

'The Gardener' is more than a marvellous collection of images by a master photographer. John Burnside

Master Collection Photographer More Marvellous Than Gardener Images

The conventional, and painfully artificial, separation of the human realm from the natural other is bound to perish, albeit over a period of time, until we are obliged to learn how to cultivate our gardens under the most demanding conditions. John Burnside

Time Natural Demanding Separation Other Our Obliged Bound Over Most Until Period Learn Perish How Cultivate Conditions Artificial Human Conventional Realm Painfully Gardens Albeit

I know that the only reason American landscapes sometimes disappoint me is that, just a century before I was born, the great rivers and prairies and wild forests still existed. And they were sublime. John Burnside

As a child, I was always intrigued by the question: what is it that distinguishes a city from a town? Is it size? Population? Location? When I asked grown-ups, the confident answer was that a city has to have a cathedral - which, to a child raised in a devout Catholic setting, made sense. John Burnside

Worldwide, enormous areas of peatland are still being lost to agricultural development, drainage schemes, overgrazing, and exploitation-based infrastructure development projects such as roads, electricity pylons, telephone masts and gas pipelines. John Burnside

Lost Drainage Enormous Worldwide Projects Telephone Area Schemes Roads Development Still Being Infrastructure Electricity Agricultural Gas

The woods were a boon; all too often, the forest offered danger and mystery. Yet it could be liberating. If you entered that wild place on its own terms, you might be accorded wisdom. John Burnside

Given the right information to help them decide, people will opt for conditions that benefit our creaturely neighbours, even where they have no particular interest in larks or cuckoo wasps - because those conditions benefit us. John Burnside

The older I get, the happier my childhood becomes. John Burnside

Older Becomes Get Childhood Happier

Quotes by scottish authors