Sedulia's Quotations

Atheist Hume forced to say Lord's Prayer

...a witch-haunted bog, memorable for having nearly swallowed up David Hume the historian, who was a native of Ninewells, in the neighbourhood. Hume missed his footing in the mire, and sticking fast, called for assistance, and was at last heard by some people, who ran to give help. Seeing, however, that it was Hume "the unbeliever," they turned back from the amiable philosopher, remarking, "Na, na, the deil has him, let the deil keep him."  Mr Somerville mentions, that Hume got out of the bog, and wrote his history afterwards, but does not relate the means by which the philosopher and historian escaped an absorption of his body, analogous of the absorption his mind had undergone in metaphysical mier. The "deil" would have had him both ways, the story goes, but for a compassonate milkmaid, who helped him out, after compelling him to say the Lord's prayer, as a proof that he was a true Christian.

   --From a review of The Autobiography of a Working Man (by Alexander Somerville, pub. 1848) in The Eclectic Review (pub. 1848) by Thomas Price and Edwin Paxton Hood

Dr Johnson does not hate the Scots-- or frogs, in their native element

Someone once asked him why he hated the Scots so much. "You are mistaken, Sir," he said; "I do not hate the Scotch; neither do I hate frogs, provided they keep in their native element; but I do not like to have them hopping about my bedchamber."

  --Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in Samuel Johnson's Insults, ed. Jack Lynch

Arbroath Declaration of Scots to the Pope: Freedom, which no honest man gives up but with life itself

It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.

        --From the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), written by Scottish nobles and abbots to the Pope. It was the Scottish declaration of independence.

Hugh MacDiarmid: For ilka thing a man can be/leaves a million mair undune

For ilka thing a man can be or think or dae
aye leaves a million mair unbeen, unthocht, undune,
till his puir warped performance is, to all that micht ha'  been,
a thistle to the mune.

        --Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) (real name Christopher Murray Grieve)

[Translation:

For every thing a man can be or think or do
still leaves a million more unbeen, unthought, undone,
Till his poor warped performance is, to all that might have been,
a thistle to the moon.]