“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.”

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.

Beauty’s of a fading nature. Has a season and is gone!

Life is but a day at most.

The honest man, though e’er sae poor, Is king o’ men, for a’ that!

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o’ the morn.

When chill November’s surly blast Made fields and forests bare.

Now’s the day and now’s the hour.

Some books are lies frae end to end.

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

As I often say, we have come a long way from the days of slavery, but in 2014, discrimination and inequality still saturate our society in modern ways.

He pays for his social ease with what used to be called his soul – his discriminations, his uniqueness, his psychic energy, his self.

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

We should also leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth; and corrodes mankind’s belief that we can better ourselves.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It’s when you’re in jail you really become a criminal.

I don’t judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they’re a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.