Tam O Shanter Quotes

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it's bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever.

Thus did they nurse their folly, as the good wife of Tam O’Shanter did her wrath, “to keep it warm.

Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew. I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered: “You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?

I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourists shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world—kilts, bagpipes, tam-o’-shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow sweaters with big diamond patterns, sacks of haggis—and how little anyone but a Scot would want them. Let

Miriam entered. "All alone?" she said. "Yes." As if at home, she took off her tam o'shanter and her long coat, hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might be their own house, his and hers.

Scotland forever, ya bass!” said Tam, rocking back and landing the perfect head-butt on Rannoch’s nose.

Finally Mary understood everything. For the music, as it wound its way through that quiet countryside, scampering and chuckling gleefully along the pebbled shores of the River Doon, sweeping up hill and over moor, dancing in the wind over the purple-fringed sea-shore, told the story of Scotland. It told of the first great magic that had taken root so many millennia ago, and of the younger powers that had come along afterwards to vie with it. It told the deep secrets that Rannoch had spent so many lifetimes searching for, and would never guess at now, as though they were the passing gossip of a market-day. It told tales of great wrongs, of unbearable suffering- and of endless forgiveness and rebirth.

Looking out the window, the king saw crowds of happy villagers waiting there to greet him, cheering wildly as he passed. And every one of them was warm as toast in yellow woolly clothes. "Gold!" cried the king. "Something better than gold," said Rumpelstiltskin's daughter. "Your people will be warm all winter." Everyone brought presents for the king. By the time he got back to his palace, he had seventeen sweaters, forty-two mufflers, eight vests, one pair of knickers, one hundred and thirty-five pairs of socks, twelve nightcaps, and a tam-o'-shanter. All the color of gold.