“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!”

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it’s bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever.

But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lou’d sae kindly, Had we never lou’d sae blindly, Never met – or never parted – We had ne’er been broken hearted.

Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us!

Some wee short hour ayont the twal.

The wide world is all before us – but a world without a friend.

Suspense is worst than disappointment.

A eunuch is a man who has had his work cut out for him.

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.

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.