"Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill."

"Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair Who glory to have thrown in air, High over arm, the trembling reed, By Ale and Kail, by Till and Tweed."

"Let first the onion flourish there, Rose among roots, the maiden-fair, Wine-scented and poetic soul Of the capacious salad bowl."

"Go, little book, and wish to all Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, A bin of wine, a spice of wit, A house with lawns enclosing it, A living river by the door, A nightingale in the sycamore!"

"Of all my verse, like not a single line; But like my title, for it is not mine. That title from a better man I stole: Ah, how much better, had I stol'n the whole!"

"I've a grand memory for forgetting, David."

"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first."

"Am I no a bonny fighter?"

"Each side, in these sort of civil broils, takes the name of honesty for its own."

"They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel."

"Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle."

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

"The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple-tart."

"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed."

"Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by. Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about?"

"A child should always say what's true And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table; At least as far as he is able."

"In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day."

"For thirty years," he said, "I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them's my views——amen, so be it."

"Them that die will be the lucky ones!"

"Many's a long night I've dreamed of cheese — toasted mostly."

"We must go on, because we can't turn back."

"You can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad."

"Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight!"

"They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener."

"What is the Black Spot, Captain?" "That's a summons, mate."

"Doctors is all swabs... and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes — what do the doctor know of lands like that? — and I lived on rum, I tell you."

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

"But the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men."

"Though the coming of the day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure, also, and the return of night refresh, renew, and quiet us; and in the pastures of the dusk we stand, like cattle, exulting in the absence of the load."

"Wherever a man is, there will be a lie."

"It is the worst of all quaint and of all cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some humiliation."

"The imagination loves to trifle with what is not."

"Sanity itself is a kind of convention."

"There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the ear."

"This is still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories."

"The old land is still the true love, the others are but pleasant infidelities."

"The wine is bottled poetry."

"If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences—for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect—if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack!"

"Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment."

"And perhaps this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient nations."

"When a man is in a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and regard--sometimes by express in a letter--sometimes face to face, with persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Solomon, he is soon forgotten."

"When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things."

"To spendthrifts money is so living and actual—it is such a thin veil between them and their pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath."

"In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence."

"Time passes quickly with lovers."

"An appeal to his alarm is never a good plan to rid oneself of a spirited young man."

"The world is a great place and stocked with wealth and beauty, and there is no limit to the rewards that may be offered. Such an one who would refuse a million of money may sell his honour for an empire or the love of a woman."

"A man, Mr. Scrymgeour, may fall into a thousand perplexities, but if his heart be upright and his intelligence unclouded, he will issue from them all without dishonour."