North-East Lowlands of Scotland Quotes

“As you walk across the lower slopes of the hills you may find a heap of stones that was once a house, and trace among the bracken the rectangle that was once a field. They are melancholy things, witnessing that courage, determination and all the ancient virtues are not enough to bring life out of a stone. A hunger for land drove the people there, and the insatiable hunger of the soil drove them away again. Those ruins are at the stony limit where a human tide spent itself before it began to ebb away.”
― John R. Allan, North-East Lowlands of Scotland