Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.

No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.

Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotch man happy!

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.