In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified.
— Robert Burns
I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities, and as few - if any - writers, either moral or political, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought.
The joy of my heart is to 'study men, their manners, and their ways,' and for this darling object I cheerfully sacrifice every other consideration.
It is natural for a young fellow to like the acquaintance of females and customary for him to keep them company when occasion serves. Some one of them is more agreeable to him than the rest; there is something, he knows not what, pleases him, he knows not how, in her company. This I take to be what is called love with the greatest part of us.
I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation.
Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, Shewed him the gentleman and scholar.
Suspense is worse than disappointment.
The appellation of a Scottish Bard is by far my highest pride; to continue to deserve it is my most exalted ambition.
There is scarcely anything to which I am so feelingly alive as the honour and welfare of my country, and, as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters.
I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me, and I am in some measure prepared and daily preparing to meet them.
I have often thought that if a well-grounded affection be not really a part of virtue, it is something extremely akin to it.
Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.
The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend.
The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o' the morn.
There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.
O thou great, unknown Power! Thou Almighty God, who hast lighted up reason in my breast and blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me.
There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can be used by anyone in so noble, so generous a passion as virtuous love.
Let them cant about decorum, Who have characters to lose!
Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.
Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!
