John Galt > Quotes

“Ye dinna ken whar frae? - I'll tell you whar frae - frae hell; sic thoughts are the cormorants that sit on the apple trees in the devil's kail-yard, and the souls o the damned are the carcasses they mak their meat o.”
― John Galt, The Entail: or, The Lairds of Grippy

“The royal borough of Chucky Stanes, like every other town of the kind, enjoys an undue proportion of ladies in a state of single blessedness. The house I rented there belonged to Miss Beenie Needles, a venerable damsel of that description. Her father, far back in the last century, had held the dignity of Provost. In the plenitude of his magisterial pomp, he erected the edifice,where Miss Beeny, with her niece, Mrs, Greenknowe, the widow of a much respected surgeon, held court, or, more properly, sat in expectation of being courted.”
― John Galt, Lawrie Todd: or, The Settlers in the Woods

“The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered over Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him. That he sometimes came out of the cloud, and was familiar and earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and mist, and the home of his spirit in the abysm of the storm, and the hiding-places of guilt.”
― John Galt, The life of Lord Byron / by John Galt. 1900 [Leather Bound]

“Whilst this change and enlargement of my mind was going on, his majesty King George IV, that gorgeous dowager, departed this life; an event of a serious kind to me, and to those with whom I had acted; for although our grief on the occasion was not of a very acute or lachrymose description, it was nevertheless heartfelt; for he stood in our opinion as the last of the regal kings, that old renowned race, who ruled with a will of their own, and were surrounded with worshippers.

'Never more,' said I, 'shall we have a monarch that will think his own will equivalent to law. His successors hereafter will only endeavour to think agreeably to their subjects; but the race of independent kings is gone forever.' In a word, the tidings of his death, though for some time expected, really smote me as a sudden and extraordinary event. Had I heard that the lions had become extinct on the face of the earth, I could not have been more filled, for a season, with wonder and a kind of sorrow.”
― John Galt, The Member: An Autobiography

“Among all the public worthies whom the approach of Majesty called into action, as the return of spring does the busy bees, none were more alert and alive to the dignity and importance of their office than the worshipful municipality of Leith. Some unknown power, which deemed itself appalling to the whole Magistracy of the ancient and loyal town, ordained that the King should land on the odiferous shores of the fishing village of Newhaven. But Bailie Macfie, as he sat at the head of the Council board with his valient peers, the intrepid Bailie Reoch and Bailie Newton, snapped his fingers at the huge bugbear, and it fled wailing away, discomfited like the spirit of Loda from the spear of Fingal, and was visible no more.”
― John Galt, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West

“In the meantime, his majesty, who has lived in dignified retirement since he came to the throne, has taken up his abode, with rural felicity, in a cottage in Windsor Forest; where he now, contemning all the pomp and follies of his youth, and this metropolis, passes his days amidst his cabbages, like Dioclesian, with innocence and tranquility, far from the intrigues of courtiers, and insensible to the murmering waves of the fluctuating populace...”
― John Galt, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West

“Mr. Roslin, it seems, had been detained in Greenock for some time, by a foul south-west wind; and everybody knows that Greenock, which is dreadfully addicted to south-westers, is, when they soak, a most wearisome place.”
― John Galt, Selected Short Stories

“I have never considered the exoteric doctrines of my associates very seriously... Some of the purest characters I have ever known are Roman catholics, and the most sordid, sectarians and presbyterians. Speculative opinions have less to do than is supposed with the conduct of men.”
― John Galt, The Autobiography of John Galt, Volume 2

“A melancholy vista discloses itself to all rational understandings; - a church in tatters; a peerage humbled and degraded - no doubt, soon to be entirely got rid off; that poor, deluded man, the well-meaning William IV, probably packed off to Hanover; the three per cents down to two, at the very best of it; a graduated property tax sapping the vitals of order in all quarters; and, no question, parliamentary grants and pensions of every description no longer held sacred!”
― John Galt, The Member: An Autobiography

“But now to begin about the jaunt. When a'thing was put in an order, me and the guidwife, with Clemy, your lady mother, after an early breakfast, steppit into our own carriage, whereto, behind, divers trunks were strappit; and we trintlet awa down the north road, taking the airt of the south wind that blaws in Scotland. At first it was very pleasant; and I had never been much in the country in a chaise, I was diverted to see how, in a sense, the trees came to meet us, and passed, as if they had been men of business having a turn to do.

...we journeyed on with a sobriety that was heartsome without banter; for really the parks on both sides were salutory to see. The hay was mown, and the corn was verging to the yellow. The haws on the hedges, though as green as capers, were a to-look; the cherries in the gardens were over and gone; but the apples in the orchards were as damsels entering their teens.

When I was nota-beneing in this way, your grandmother consternated a great deal to Clemy, saying she never thought that I had such a beautiful taste for the poeticals, and that I was surely in a fit of the bucolicks. But I, hearing her, told her I had aye a notion of the country; only that I had soon seen fallen leaves were not coined money, which, if a man would gather, it behoved him to make his dwelling-place in the howffs and thoroughfares of the children of men.”
― John Galt, Selected Short Stories

“It is our duty to help ane anither in this howling wilderness.”
― John Galt, The Last of the Lairds: or The Life and Opinions of Malachi Mailings Esq. of Auldbiggings

“Soon after the marriage of Miss Meg, George, the third son, and youngest of the family, was placed in the counting house of one of the most eminent West Indian merchants at that period in Glasgow. This incident was in no other respect important in the history of the Lairds of Grippy, than as serving to open a career to George, that would lead him into a higher class of acquaintance than his elder brothers: for it was about this time that the general merchants began to arrogate to themselves that aristocratic superiority over the shopkeepers, which they have since established into an oligarchy, as proud and sacred, in what respects the reciprocities of society, as the famous Seignories of Venice and Genoa.”
― John Galt, The Entail; or, The Lairds of Grippy

“Those who think they are destined for the high offices of state, should make themselves remarkable; for if a man aspire to distinction, he will find it most conducive to that end to assume something odd and peculiar in his behaviour; because the commonality of the world consider eccentricity as an indication of genius. Men of the world say, however, that it is a surer symptom of absurdity.”
― John Galt, Selected Short Stories

“Na na, my lad; ponder well, and a warning take. I cared nae mair for wealth, for its own sake, than others; but saw it was the key to all comforts, and to have my own will of them I in a sense coveted; but it was not the covetousness forbidden in the tenth commandment, for I never grudged no man his living. I only longed for the means by which I might conquest such havings. It was that power I sought to gain, by gaining riches - well knowing that with them I would get the potential: so dinna think I was either daft or doited, for I was no miser, but a man who saw gold ruled the world and only sought to make it a friend.”
― John Galt, Selected Short Stories

“Grant having little other inheritance than an honourable name in the traditions of his country, but anxious in these degenerate days, when matters of political economy are laid in the balance against the renown of thousands slain, to uphold the relative consequences of his family, was easily persuaded, as he approached the years of discretion, to prefer the sordid industry of commercial enterprise, to the bloody bravery of military aggression. Being still however desirous even in the craft of trade, to retain something of the freedom of his mountain ancestors, he determined, in the language of heroic fable, to espouse his fortune. With this intent, he embarked for America, and for more than five and thirty years, in the wilds of upper Canada, he pursued a course of life, which though strictly mercantile in its object, was, in its incidents and varieties, such as the mighty Fingal might from his throne of clouds have contemplated with satisfaction.”
― John Galt, Glenfell