Poets From Scotland

"At that Mother got proper blazing, "And thank you, sir, kindly," said she. "What, waste all our lives raising children To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!""

"Now Albert had heard about lions, How they was ferocious and wild; And to see Wallace lying so peaceful, Just didn't seem right to the child. So straightway the brave little feller, Not showing a morsel of fear, Took his stick with the 'orses 'ead 'andle, And shoved it in Wallace's ear."

"Then giving young Albert a shilling, He said "Pop off back to the Zoo. 'Ere's your stick with the 'orses's 'ead 'andle, Go and see what the Tigers can do!""

"Then Pa, who had seen the occurrence, And didn't know what to do next, Said "Mother! Yon Lion's 'et Albert," And Mother said "Well, I am vexed!""

"Sam, Sam, pick oop tha musket."

"There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool, That's noted for fresh air and fun."

"A grand little lad was young Albert, All dressed in his best; quite a swell. With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle, The finest that Woolworth's could sell."

"Y' not charging tuppence for that little lad?" Said Mother, her eyes flashing wild. "Per tuppence per person per trip," answered Ted, "Per woman, per man, or per child."

"They didn't think much to the Ocean, The waves, they was fiddlin' and small, There was no wrecks and nobody drownded, Fact, nothing to laugh at at all."

"He hes done peteouslie devour, The noble Chawcer of makaris flouir, The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thré; Timor mortis conturbat me."

"Strong be thy wallis that about the standis; Wise be the people that within the dwellis; Fresh is thy ryver with his lusty strandis; Blith be thy chirches, wele sownyng be thy bellis; Riche be thy merchauntis in substance that excellis Fair be thy wives, right lovesom, white and small; Clere be thy virgyns, lusty under kellis: London, thou art the flour of Cities all."

"On to the ded gois all estatis, Princis, prelotis, and potestatis, Baith riche and pur of al degre; Timor mortis conturbat me.He takis the knychtis in to feild, Anarmit under helme and scheild; Victour he is at all mellie; Timor mortis conturbat me."

"Sweet rois of vertew and of gentilness, Delytsum lily of everie lustynes, Richest in bontie and in bewtie clear, And everie vertew that is wenit dear, Except onlie that ye are mercyless.Into your garth this day I did persew; There saw I flowris that fresche were of hew; Baith quhyte and reid most lusty were to seyne, And halesome herbis upon stalkis greene; Yet leaf nor flowr find could I nane of rew.I doubt that Merche, with his cauld blastis keyne, Has slain this gentil herb, that I of mene; Quhois piteous death dois to my heart sic paine That I would make to plant his root againe,— So confortand his levis unto me bene."

"I that in heill wes and gladness, Am trublit now with gret seiknes, And feblit with infermité; Timor mortis conturbat me.Our plesance heir is all vane glory, This fals warld is bot transitory, The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle; Timor mortis conturbat me."

"My deathe chasis my lyfe so besalie That wery is my goist to fle so fast."

"All wemen of us suld haif honoring, Service and luve, aboif all uthir thing."

"All luve is lost bot upone God allone."

"Man, pleis thy makar and be mirry, And sett not by this warld a chirry."

"Ay farest faderis hes farrest fowlis."

"So nixt to simmer, winter bein, Nixt eftir comfort, cairis kein, Nixt derk midnicht the mirthful morrow; Nixt eftir joy ay cumis sorow. So is this warld, and ay hes bein."

"'Tis not for mortals always to be blest."

"Of right and wrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard; And (strange to tell) he practis'd what he preach'd."

"Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels diseases, softens every pain, Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague."

"There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust."

"Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, The sapless habit daily to bedew, And give the hesitating wheels of life Gliblier to play."

"This restless world Is full of chances, which by habit's power To learn to bear is easier than to shun."

"How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend."

"Like Douglas conquer, or like Douglas die."

"A rude and boisterous captain of the sea."

"In the first days Of my distracting grief, I found myself As women wish to be who love their lords."

"I'll woo her as the lion wooes his brides."

"My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain, Whose constant cares were to increase his store, And keep his only son, myself, at home."

"“The source of my name,” the vehicle had replied, “The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: ’One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.’ It is an old proverb.”"

"Really we’re no better—you’re no better—than the savages. They always find excuses to justify their crimes, too. The point is not to commit them in the first place."

"Most men—most women, too, no doubt—lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high. In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it."

"On this purely practical issue he judged massacre wasteful and even contrary as a method of control. Fear lasted a week, anger a year and resentment a lifetime, he’d held."

"Had they felt righteous, believing that the justice of their cause was being recognized by higher powers? For no doubt that was how they did think. It seemed to tyl Loesp everybody always thought they were right, and shared, too, the quaint belief that the very fervency of a belief, however deluded, somehow made it true. They were all of them fools. There was no right and wrong, there was simply effectiveness and inability, might and weakness, cunning and gullibility. That he knew this was his advantage, but it was one of better understanding, not moral superiority—he had no delusions there."

"Ideas about what happened after you died varied even among the priestly cast. Primitives were able to have more straightforward religions because they didn’t know any better. Once you knew even a little of the reality of the situation in the outside universe, it all got a bit more complex: there were lots of aliens and they all had—or had once had—their own myths and religions. Some aliens were immortal; some had constructed their own fully functional afterlives, where the deceased—recorded, transcribed—ended up after death; some had made thinking machines that had their own sets of imponderable and semi-godlike powers; some just were gods, like the WorldGod, for example, and some had Sublimed, which itself was arguably a form of ascension to Godhead."

"Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries."

"Ferbin’s father had had the same robustly pragmatic view of religion as he’d had of everything else. In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution. A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever."

"“Fate, I tell you, if not the hand of the WorldGod itself…or whatever manipulatory appendage WorldGods possess. Anyway, the hand, metaphorically, of the WorldGod. Possibly.” “I think you underguess the workings of blind chance, sir.”"

"This version felt like the truth, she thought; close enough to the myths and legends of her own people, but less self-serving, less dramatically glorious, more equivocal in its moral implications."

"Holse had no idea how these things worked; he had never really bothered with religion, though he had always paid lip-service to the church for the sake of an easy life. He had long suspected that the WorldGod was just another convenient semi-fiction supporting the whole structure that sustained the rich and powerful in their privilege."

"Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!"

"~ Want to know one ugly thought? ~ Are there not enough in the world already? ~ Assuredly. But sometimes ugly thoughts can be prevented from becoming ugly deeds by exposing them. ~ If you say so. ~ One should always ask who has most to gain."

"Life buzzed in, fumed about, rattled around and quite thoroughly infested the entire galaxy, and probably—almost certainly—well beyond. The vast ongoingness of it all somehow put all one’s own petty concerns and worries into context, making them seem not irrelevant but of much less distressing immediacy. Context was indeed all, as her father had always insisted, but the greater context she was learning about acted to shrink the vast-seeming scale of the Eighth Level of Sursamen and all its wars, politics, disputes, struggles, tribulations and vexations until it all looked very far away and trivial indeed."

"I do what I can to make this war as humane in its inhumanity as I can, and in any case, I always know that however bad it may be, its sheer unnecessary awfulness at least helps guarantee that we are profoundly not in some designed and overseen universe and so have escaped the demeaning and demoralising fate of existing solely within some simulation."

"Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held."

"Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too."

"Did you know that true subjective time is measured in the minimum duration of demonstrably separate thoughts?"