how much of the fun of parenthood lay in watching the children remake, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries.

Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it. ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory.

And I am a mockery, who was God before.

The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

To visit a new country for the first time is great fun; but it is even greater fun to introduce somebody else to a country that you know.

Nature has decreed that for what men suffer by having to shave, be killed in battle, and eat the legs of chickens, women make amends by housekeeping, childbirth, and writing all the letters for both of them.