James Hogg > Quotes

“With regard to the work itself, I dare not venture a judgment, for I do not understand it.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself

“…he knew no other pleasure but what consisted in opposition.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much as consigning them to eternal damnation.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“An exaltation of spirit lifted me, as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below.”
― James Hogg

“The attendance of that brother was now become like the attendance of a demon on some devoted being that had sold himself to destruction”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Having been bred amongst mountains I am always unhappy when in a flat country. Whenever the skirts of the horizon come on a level with myself I feel myself quite uneasy and generally have a headache.
(Letter to Sir Walter Scott, 25 July 1802)”
― James Hogg

“We are all subjected to two distinct natures in the same person. I myself have suffered grievously in that way.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“It is the controller of Nature alone that can bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. Who is he that causeth the mole, from his secret path of darkness, to throw up the gem, the gold, and the precious ore? The same that from the mouths of babes and sucklings can extract the perfection of praise, and who can make the most abject of his creatures instrumental in bringing the most hidden truths to light.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Will you no come back again?
Better loved you’ll never be,
And will you no come back again?”
― James Hogg

“I never go but where I have some great purpose to serve," returned he, "either in the advancement of my own power and dominion or in thwarting my enemies.”
― James Hogg

“It strikes me, my dear, that religious devotion would be somewhat out of place tonight”
― James Hogg

“I have known a lady, John, who was delivered of a blackamoor child, merely from the circumstance of having got a start by the sudden entrance of her negro servant, and not being able to forget him for several hours”
― James Hogg

“Alas, what short-sighted improvident creatures we are, all of us; and how often does the evening cup of joy lead to sorrow in the morning!”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Religion is a sublime and glorious thing, the bond of society on earth, and the connector of humanity with the Divine nature; but there is nothing so dangerous to man as the wresting of its principles, or forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is above all others the readiest way to destruction.”
― James Hogg

“It is for his great mental faculties that I dread him," said he. "It is incalculable what evil such a person as he may do, if so disposed. There is a sublimity in his ideas, with which there is to me a mixture of terror; and, when he talks of religion, he does it as one that rather dreads its truths than reverences them. He, indeed, pretends great strictness of orthodoxy regarding some of the points of doctrine embraced by the reformed church; but you do not seem to perceive that both you and he are carrying these points to a dangerous extremity. Religion is a sublime and glorious thing, the bonds of society on earth, and the connector of humanity with the Divine nature; but there is nothing so dangerous to man as the wresting of any of its principles, or forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is of all others the readiest way to destruction. Neither is there anything so easily done. There is not an error into which a man can fall which he may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of, and though your boasted theologian shunned the full discussion of the subject before me, while you pressed it, I can easily see that both you and he are carrying your ideas of absolute predestination, and its concomitant appendages, to an extent that overthrows all religion and revelation together; or, at least, jumbles them into a chaos, out of which human capacity can never select what is good. Believe me, Mr. Robert, the less you associate with that illustrious stranger the better, for it appears to me that your creed and his carries damnation on the very front of it.”
― James Hogg

“I am wedded to you so closely, that I feel as if I were the same person. Our essences are one, our bodies and spirits being united, so, that I am drawn towards you as by magnetism, and wherever you are, there must my presence be with you.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Auld John may dee a beggar in a hay barn, or at the back of a dike, but he sall aye be master o' his ain thoughts an' gie them vent or no, as he likes”
― James Hogg

“I anticipate with joy the approaching period when the stigmas of poverty and pride so liberally bestowed on the highlanders by our southern gentry will be as inapplicable to the inhabitants of that country as of any in the island.”
― James Hogg, Highland Journeys

“By that time he had pushed the bottle so long and so freely, that its fumes had taken possession of every brain to such a degree, that they held Dame Reason rather at the staff's end, overbearing all her counsels and expostulations.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Hold, Sir, I say! None of your profanity before me. If I do evil to anyone on such occasions, it is because he will have it so; therefore, the evil is not of my doing.”
― James Hogg

“As soon as I arrived, I went to the head inn, held by Mr. Creighton, a silly, despicable man, but privileged in having an excellent wife.”
― James Hogg, Highland Tours: The Ettrick Shepherd's Travels in the Scottish Highlands and Western Isles in 1802, 1803 and 1804

“Farewell, world, with all thy miseries; for comforts or enjoyments hast thou none! Farewell, woman, whom I have despised and shunned; and man, whom I have hated; whom, nevertheless, I desire to leave in charity! And thou, sun, bright emblem of a far brighter effulgence, I bid farewell to thee also! I do not now take my last look of thee, for to thy glorious orb shall a poor suicide's last earthly look be raised.”
― James Hogg

“As he approached the swire at the head of the dell – that little delightful verge from which in one moment the eastern limits and shores of the Lothian arise on the view, - as he approached it, I say, and a little space from the height, he beheld, to his astonishment, a bright halo in the cloud of haze, that rose in a semi-circle over his head like a pale rainbow. He was struck motionless at the view of the lovely vision; for it so chanced that he had never seen the same appearance before, though common at early morn. But he soon perceived the cause of the phenomenon, and that it proceeded from the rays of the sun from a pure unclouded morning sky striking upon this dense vapour which refracted them. But the better all the works of nature are understood, the more they will be ever admired. That was a scene that would have entranced the man of science with delight, but which the uninitiated and sordid man would have regarded less than the mole rearing up his hill in silence and in darkness.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“there not enough of merit in the blood of Jesus to save thousands of worlds, if it was for these worlds that he died? Now,”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“Who was Lady Scott originally? I really wish anybody would tell me, for surely someone must know. There is a veil of mystery hung over that dear lady's birth and parentage, which I have been unable to see through or lift up; and there have been more lies told to me about it, and even published in all the papers of Britain, by those who ought to have known than ever was told about those of any woman that ever was born.”
― James Hogg, Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott

“These mysterious and unaccountable incidents by degrees impressed the minds of the inhabitants with terror that cannot be described; no woman or boy would go out of doors after sunset, on any account whatever, and there was scarcely a man who dust venture forth alone after the fall of evening. If they could have been sure that brownies and fairies had only power to assume the human shape, they would not have been nearly such peril and perplexity; but there was no form of any thing animate or inanimate, save that of a lamb, that they were sure of; they were of course waylaid at every turn, and kept in continual agitation.”
― James Hogg, The Brownie of Bodsbeck

“The fact is, the forest being surrounded by high mountains, remained excluded from any intercourse with the more fertile districts surrounding these: even to this day, the cross roads are in a state of nature. The consequence of all this was, a later and more sudden emergence from barbarism.”
― James Hogg, Highland Journeys

“If you would argue until the end of life, the infallible creature must alone be right.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“The good parson again blessed her, and went away. She took leave of him with tears in her eyes, entreating him often to visit her in that heathen land of the Amorite, the Hittite, and the Girgashite: to which he assented, on many solemn and qualifying conditions—and then the comely bride retired to her chamber to pray.”
― James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner