If the great Dutch language disappeared from literary usage and a Dutchman wrote in German a story of the Lekside peasants, one may hazard he would ask and receive a certain latitude and forbearance in his usage of German. He might import into his pages some score or so untranslatable words and idioms - untranslatable except in their context and setting; he might mould in some fashion his German to the rhythms and cadence of the kindred speech that his peasants speak [...] The courtesy that the hypothetical Dutchman might receive from German a Scot may invoke from the great English tongue.

- Lewis Grassic Gibbon

 

All things considered, I have little doubt that the ideas of culture which prevailed in the second half of the eighteenth century are largely responsible for finally reducing our old Lowland tongue to the position of a dialect, from which it has never since recovered.

- W. A. Craigie

 

Each province loves its dialect, for it is, after all, the element in which the soul catches its breath.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For mair anent Scots, see http://www.scots-online.org/.