I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me, and I am in some measure prepared and daily preparing to meet them.
His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, Shewed him the gentleman and scholar.
Let them cant about decorum, Who have characters to lose!
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.
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!
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.
And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation.
In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified.
There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
Suspense is worse than disappointment.
There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.
The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend.
