God forgive me for having thought it possible that a schoolmaster could be out and out a rational being.

You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.

A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination.

A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the cause of philosophy.

Do not Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and poets and philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.