“Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, That’s a’ the learning I desire.”

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!

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

The knowledge of God, the formation of ideas, the mastery of desire and passion, the distinction between that which is to be chosen and that which is to be rejected, all these man owes to his form.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!