“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

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.

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.

I’ve got a long way to go to being the ultimate best, but I think my time is now. And I’m starting to enter my prime.

All right, every day ain’t going to be the best day of your life, don’t worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.

You never know if you have met your best friend in life yet. That still may be to come.

For five years I’ve felt like the best prostitute in a high-class whorehouse. But all the other girls get paid more than I do.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

There’s nothing I’ve ever worked on that beat ‘Game of Thrones’ – that’s a 10-hour movie; they put a lot of money in it.

The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved.