“Inspiring bold JohnBarleycorn! What dangers thou canst make us scorn! Wi’ usquebae, we’ll face the devil!”

How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.

Farewell, my friends! farewell, my foes! My peace with these, my love with those. The bursting tears my heart declare; Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.

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!

Wise men say nothing in dangerous times.

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

Cultivate your curves – they may be dangerous but they won’t be avoided.

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

Women are like roads. The more curves they have, the more dangerous they are.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

There is always danger for those who are afraid.