His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, Shewed him the gentleman and scholar.
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.
The joy of my heart is to 'study men, their manners, and their ways,' and for this darling object I cheerfully sacrifice every other consideration.
I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
It is natural for a young fellow to like the acquaintance of females and customary for him to keep them company when occasion serves. Some one of them is more agreeable to him than the rest; there is something, he knows not what, pleases him, he knows not how, in her company. This I take to be what is called love with the greatest part of us.
There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can be used by anyone in so noble, so generous a passion as virtuous love.
There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.
Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!
Suspense is worse than disappointment.
Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me, and I am in some measure prepared and daily preparing to meet them.
Look abroad through Natures range Natures mighty law is change.
I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities, and as few - if any - writers, either moral or political, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought.
I have often thought that if a well-grounded affection be not really a part of virtue, it is something extremely akin to it.
The best laid schemes o Mice an Men Gang aft agley An leae us nought but grief an pain For promisd joy.
The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o' the morn.
The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend.
There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.
Let them cant about decorum, Who have characters to lose!
O thou great, unknown Power! Thou Almighty God, who hast lighted up reason in my breast and blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me.
Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
There is scarcely anything to which I am so feelingly alive as the honour and welfare of my country, and, as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters.
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.
Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing.
The appellation of a Scottish Bard is by far my highest pride; to continue to deserve it is my most exalted ambition.
In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified.
And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation.
