“When Nature her great masterpiece designed,And framed her last, best work, the human mind,Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,She formed of various stuff the various Man.”

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.

But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lou’d sae kindly, Had we never lou’d sae blindly, Never met – or never parted – We had ne’er been broken hearted.

Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us!

Some wee short hour ayont the twal.

The wide world is all before us – but a world without a friend.

Suspense is worst than disappointment.

A eunuch is a man who has had his work cut out for him.

The best plans of men and mice often go awry.

She is a winsome wee thing, She is a handsome wee thing, She is a bonny wee thing, This sweet wee wife o’ mine.

The trout in yonder wimpling burn – That glides, a silver dart, – And, safe beneath the shady thorn, – Defies the anglers art.

To step aside is human.

My dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heav’n is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man the friend of truth the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there’s another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.

God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow’s head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel.

Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious.

Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, That’s a’ the learning I desire.

Photographs are of course about their makers, and are to be read for what they disclose in that regard no less than for what they reveal of the world as their makers comprehend, invent, and describe it.

The first hope of a painter who feels hopeful about painting is the hope that the painting will move, that it will live outside its frame.

Men keep their agreements when it is an advantage to both parties not to break them; and I shall so frame my laws that it will be evident to the Athenians that it will be for their interest to observe them.

He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest.

I think I’ve changed a little bit. I don’t know whether it’s for the better or for the worse at the moment. I’ve settled into a different mind frame now… being a bit wilder maybe!

In order not to hold a frame with someone, you have to be intimidated by them.

The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.

I’m the kind of person, if, if I have a day that is nerve-wracking, or my week has been bad or something’s going down, I won’t eat. Some people eat, I don’t eat. And it shows in my physical frame.