“As long as the Fates permit, live cheerfully.”

It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.

It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.

Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.

Steady of heart and stout of hand.

Do not Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and poets and philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?

Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it.

A Christmas gambol oft could cheer The poor man’s heart through half the year.

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.

Great talent has always a little madness mixed up with it.

Where is the coward that would not dare to fight for such a land as Scotland?

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.

Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.

You and I were always made for this moment. Fate may have brought us together, but we chose to stay.

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

You don’t really get to choose who you fall in love with. Love chooses you.

The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.

We’ve got no fairytale ending, in God’s hands our fate is complete. Your heaven’s here in my heart, our love’s this dust beneath my feet.

Tis writ on Paradise’s gate, Woe to the dupe that yields to fate!

I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.