Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.

Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.

Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day?

In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses which he is loved and blessed by.