“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion.”

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.

Mankind is a science that defies definitions.

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.

Dare to be honest and fear no labor. … Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

The voice of Nature loudly cries,And many a message from the skies,That something in us never dies.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley, And leave us nought but grief and pain, For promised joy.

Some rhyme a neebor’s name to lash; Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu’ cash; Some rhyme to court the countra clash, An’ raise a din; For me, an aim I never fash; I rhyme for fun.

There’s some are fou o’ love divine; There’s some are fou o’ brandy.

God knows, I’m no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be.

The golden hours on angel wings Flew o’er me and my dearie, For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary.

My Son, these maxims make a rule An lump them ay thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither.

You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am.

It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.

Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own?

The great secret of the successful fool is that he’s no fool at all.

You’d be a fool to think that you leaving me in darkness meant I’d stay there forever.

They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it.

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

Impossible is the word for fools in my dictionary.