13 Quotes by Neil M. Gunn

in a few moments he came into the core of himself, where he was alone, and felt strangely companioned, not by anyone or anything, but by himself. The rejected self found refuge here, not a cowed refuge, but somehow a wandering ease; as if it were indestructible, and had its own final pride, its own secret eyes.

...an' there never yet was speculation but in the long run, it meant smash. Ye run so hard that ye fall ower yoursel

In these few seconds Finn lived such a long time, that the marble fell back into the bottom of an exhausted world.

What a great and happy place the world was! But you had to be big and grown-up before you could do just what you liked.

You would think," added Art, "that a wedding was a great thing.""Well," replied Old Hector, "it's not a small thing, as a rule. They contrive, one way or another, to make a lot of it.

We cannot buy it. We are too poor. Then men who have made the law have taken our own drink from us, and have not left us wherewith to buy it. Yet they can buy it, because they are rich. I have a feeling that that is not just. I do not grudge them their riches and all it can buy for them.

It all comes back to one thing... brutality. Compel people into a position where they have to use the brute that's in them in order to live and the brute will waken all right. When the brute is naturally strong in a man - that's the man who becomes the leader of the pressgang. And there you have it. Where all is compulsion and enforcement, it's the bully that rules.

We have to combine, certainly, but if we combine to fight on the idea of each man making more money for himself, then we end by fighting one another. And that's the trouble now... human dealings are founded - founded - not on money but on what is fair and just all round.

It all comes back to one thing... brutality. Compel people into a position where they have to use the brute that’s in them in order to live and the brute will waken all right. When the brute is naturally strong in a man – that’s the man who becomes the leader of the pressgang. And there you have it. Where all is compulsion and enforcement, it’s the bully that rules.