Selected Short Stories Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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