“Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!”

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.

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.