The appellation of a Scottish Bard is by far my highest pride; to continue to deserve it is my most exalted ambition.

I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities, and as few - if any - writers, either moral or political, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought.

I have often thought that if a well-grounded affection be not really a part of virtue, it is something extremely akin to it.

There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can be used by anyone in so noble, so generous a passion as virtuous love.