“Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than a habit of drinking.”

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.

A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.

It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

On tour, I don’t drink, because I don’t think in any other job you are supposed to get to work and drink whisky.

War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

It is better to be full of drink than full of food.

All who drink of this remedy recover in a short time except those whom it does not help, who all die.

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.