“The upright, honest-hearted man Who strives to do the best he can, Need never fear the church’s ban Or hell’s damnation.”

God knows, I’m not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

When matters are desperate we must put on a desperate face.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.

Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry. Friendship had I been so blest as to have met with you in time, might have led me – God of love only knows where.

The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw, He dearly loved the lasses, O.

Be Briton still to Britain true, Among oursel’s united; For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted.

I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent

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.

The best laid plans take 40 years to complete.

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.

The heart that is generous and kind most resembles God.

O Life! thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I!

Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!

Ye Hypocrites, are these your pranks To murder men and gie God thanks Desist for shame, proceed no further God won’t accept your thanks for murder.

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.

I’m always hungry. I want to be the best.

I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

Our best years are only ahead of us, so we got to continue to keep pushing.

The best players will play. That’s the way it will always be.

Once you are labeled ‘the best’ you want to stay up there, and you can’t do it by loafing around.