Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand!

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

I did not myself set a high estimation on wealth, and had the affectation of most young men of lively imagination, who suppose that they can better dispense with the possession of money, than resign their time and faculties to the labour necessary to acquire it.

Many miles away there's a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.

Whose lenient sorrows find relief, whose joys are chastened by their grief.

Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

War is the only game in which both sides lose.