Good Lord, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his books and his crooks, With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all, he's a problem must puzzle the devil.

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.

[Scottish songs] are, I own, frequently wild, & unreduceable to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect.

Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain.

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

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.

Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.