Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“There's no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“It feels like Scotland." "Have you ever been?" "Mmmm. Twice. Have you?" "No." "You should. It's your roots. You'll be surprised how much they tug at you when you breathe the air in the Highlands or look out at a lowland loch.”
― Nora Roberts, Robert & Cybil

“Here I first mounted a little Highland steed; and if there had been many spectators, should have been somewhat ashamed of my figure in the march. The horses of the Islands, as of other barren countries, are very low: they are indeed musculous and strong, beyond what their size gives reason for expecting; but a bulky man upon one of their backs makes a very disproportionate appearance.”
― Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

“Then she says, You don't read women authors do ya? At least that's what I think I hear her say. Well, I said, how would you know and what would it matter anyway. Well, she says you just don't seem like you do. I said you're way wrong. She says which ones have you read then. I say I've read Erica Jong.”
― Bob Dylan

“The Hotel dining-room, like most of the others I was to find in the Highlands, had its walls covered with pictures of all sorts of wild game, living or in the various postures of death that are produced by sport. Between these pictures the walls were alert with the stuffed heads of deer, furnished with antlers of every degree of magnificence. A friend of mine has a theory that these pictures of dying birds and wounded beasts are intended to whet the diner's appetite, and perhaps they did in the more lusty age of Victoria; but I found they had the opposite effect on me, and had to keep my eyes from straying too often to them. In one particular hotel this idea was carried out with such thoroughness that the walls of its dining room looked like a shambles, they presented such an overwhelming array of bleeding birds, beasts and fishes. To find these abominations on the walls of Highland hotels, among a people of such delicacy in other things, is peculiarly revolting, and rubs in with superfluous force that this is a land whose main contemporary industry is the shooting down of wild creatures; not production of any kind but wholesale destruction. This state of things is not the fault of the Highlanders, but of the people who have bought their country and come to it chiefly to kill various forms of life.”
― Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey

“Here, if nowhere else in the land, the sense of satiety is unknown; and it is to this mental tonic, even more than to the bracing air of the heights, that we owe the unwearied spirit which nerves us to walk more leagues upon the mountains than we could walk miles upon the plain. For in the lowlands we walk with the body only; in the highlands we walk with the mind”
― Henry Stephens Salt, On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

“I doona ken. Explain that to me, Declan. Why do you matter to me so much?"
His body shuddered giving her a slight thrill that she might affect him just as much as he affected her. Pulling back slightly, his eyes met hers.
"Fiona, love, you doona ken what you're doin' to me.”
― Laura Hunsaker, Highland Eclipse

“Nursed in poverty he acquired a hardihood which enabled him to sustain severe privations. As the simplicity of his life gave vigour to his body, so it fortified his mind. Possessing a frame and constitution thus hardened he was taught to consider courage as the most honourable virtue, cowardice the most disgraceful failing.”
― David Stewart, Sketches of the Character, Institutions and Customs of the Highlanders of Scotland

“You should see Nina’s clan tartan," she said, pouring herself more tea. "It’s white with orange, green, and royal blue. Horrendous."
"We took to calling any obnoxious pattern Clan MacGarish," I said.
"Or MacHideous," added Laurence.
"MacUgly," I continued.
"MacClash," he countered.”
― Molly Ringle, What Scotland Taught Me

“Tonight, Dunadhar Castle is ours.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Trashy Romance Novel

“Glancing down, Meg saw his eyes trained on her finger. “The ring? It’s been in my family for generations. I recently inherited it.â€� Meg dropped her eyes at the thought of her Aunt Gilly. The note that had come with the ring was written by Gilly’s own hand. It had said that her “destiny awaited,â€� whatever that meant.
“Is it you?â€� His softly voiced question brought her gaze to his.”
― Laura Hunsaker, Amethyst Heat

“My father says you're to steal me away. Is that true?" Her lovely blue eyes flashed with mischief.
"Your father said that?" Rubbing the back of his neck, Declan met her eyes. "And what did you say about it?"
She dropped her bold gaze. "I told him that nothing so exciting ever happens around here.”
― laura hunsaker, Highland Eclipse

“Her eyelids lowered, and her irises darkened a shade, flickering with unmistakable desire. “All I want is you.”
― Lisa Carlisle, Knights of Stone: Seth

“Alec moved his mouth over her neck and the top edge of her breasts. “You must really want me to heat you up.â€� A hint of humor sparkled through the deep velvet tone.
“To volcanic levels,â€� she replied.”
― Lisa Carlisle, Stone Cursed: Zodiac Shifters: Taurus

“The attempt to separate Lowland from Highland Scotland ignores the extent to which Lowland Scots are the descendants of Highlanders, and how many Lowland Scots, like Nan Shepherd, made the country's mountains the focus of their spiritual aspirations. 'Highlandism' is not simply the ersatz adoption of a stereotypical version of Scottish culture which is entirely unconnected with the reality of modern Scottish life: the Highlands are both the geographical and the historical backdrop with which 'Lowland' Scottish culture interacts.”
― Cairns Craig, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence

“We filled our lungs with the cold, still air and forgot our small needs and worries. We had a sound roof to shelter us, peat and wood for warmth, milk, eggs and potatoes in plenty to keep us fed. Health and strength we knew to be enormous benefits they really are. We were free to open our minds and let the stark beauty of hill and moor and sky strike into us.”
― Katharine Stewart, A Croft in the Hills

“As Smollett relates, Dumbarton has always sat on the edge of something. Historically, it has marked the line between the Romans and Picts, between the Picts and Britons, and between Highlands and Lowlands. The area has been a geographic, social, cultural, linguistic, agricultural and economic border zone for millennia. This liminal status seems to fascinate Smollett, and he returns to it again and again in his writing.”
― Craig Smith, The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry

“One can go scarcely a mile in the mountains without finding one of the scenes of Ossian, one of the caves of Fingal, the traces of their passing, or the site of their tombs.”
― Charles Nodier, Promenade from Dieppe to the Mountains of Scotland

“In a flash it came to me - might not people who were forced to spend their working hours between walls like to hear about what went on in a hill-top croft, of how it was possible to get an immense amount of fun and satisfaction out of lifting loads of mud into a cart, even though your boots were leaking and you knew there was not enough in the kitty to buy another pair? Would they like to know about the way light could stream down a blue hillside on a spring noon, how a lark could suddenly leap into a pale, washed skye after a night of storm and make the air ring with song, of how it was possible to get by every sort of difficulty as long as there was this knowledge that you were all in it together, this solidarity with rock and sun and bird? I believed they would.”
― Katharine Stewart, A Croft in the Hills

“They say we Highlanders take in dancin' wiâ€� our mother’s milk!â€� said Tam.
“You must have skipped your breakfast that day then!â€� said Souter Johnnie.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“The pipe-music filled the room with sound, until it seemed that the throbbing walls must burst asunder- or the very roof of the inn fly off, to release the pressure. The candle-light pranced around the room in a crazy reel of will-oâ€�-the-wisps, distorted by the clouds of dust melting down from the ceiling like Hebridean mist. The Highlanders looked at each other in wild surmise, then started smashing tankards against the walls in time with the swirling strains of music, sending ale cascading up into the air, spattering the ceiling and soaking the revellersâ€� hair and plaids.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Spring in the hills would confront the greatest artist with too vast a panorama. I doubt if he could ever capture it. For Spring there is more than colour; it is music and scent. The burns literally hum down the hillside, the trees have rhythm in their shaking. The smell of Spring in the hills is a blending of peaty thickness, bracken-mould, flowers' spicyness, and clean, quick purge of the wind. Down in the hollows anemones, bereft of smell, gleam in pale patches.”
― Jessie Kesson, A Country Dweller's Years: Nature Writings by Jessie Kesson

“the old house,
in the lee of the hills,
surrounded by relics
of the old powder mill.

the ancient stones silent,
the water wheels still,
but yet there is life
in the ruins of the mill.

the birds and the sheep
find shelter to sleep
the fisherman fish
in the river so deep.

the flowers of the forest
carpet the glades.
and the frogs they are leaping
down in the lades.

laughter bygone
forever is still
yet the echoes still linger
here in the mill.

voices come whispering
from the century that was
and dash is just resting
under the moss.

on nights of bright moon
flooding over the hill
I sense the life breathing
here, in the mill.

and here in the house
time beats gently past
as it has done before
and will to the last.”
― Christine Marion Fraser, Green Are My Mountains

“Badenoch encapsulates the dichotomy of the sporting estate. Rich southern incomers provided much-needed income and jobs, a new economic lifeline in difficult times, while at the same time riding roughshod over the last remnants of the traditional farming economy to suit their own interests - another blow to a way of life that had survived and evolved over countless generations.”
― David Taylor, 'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863

“I would start at 6 a.m. on a six mile walk and a piece of dry oat cake was nearly always eaten before we reached the place selected to commence the day's shooting. The spying, stalking,and chasing would continue until dark. When there was a kill, or chase, we would not get back to the huts before ten or twelve at night, worn out, and so hungry as to be ready to eat anything. After attending to the dogs I had to walk home, a distance of two miles [sometimes not getting to bed till 2:00 a.m.], and next morning at 6 a.m. would be off again with a fresh gentleman.”
― William Collie

“Scott's description of the stag in The Lady of the Lake, is much more challenging than the image of Landseer's Monarch of the Glen. He refers to the 'antlered monarch of the waste', a far more appropriate creature of the upper reaches of Glen Artney where Canto I of The Lady of the Lake begins. The problem is that Scott and Landseer have become too closely associated; they have become a conjoined stereotype of the Highlands from which neither can escape. That is not such a problem for Landseer; indeed, without his association with Scott he would be much less known today. But it is a problem for Scott and the Highlands, because Landseer's image of The Monarch of the Glen has been visually conflated with Scott's literary work in the minds of so many.”
― Murdo MacDonald, Literary Tourism, the Trossachs and Walter Scott