"Criticism in Scotland, of books as well as plays, is often bedevilled because we all know each other too well. The clique can cast its chill over its rivals; the claque delude with false praise."

"Bide the storm ye canna hinder, Mindin’ through the strife, Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty Lichts the grey o’ life."

"They agonise in sordid tenements, with children stabled worse than sheep or kye. O, how can grace or peace or health abide such poverty?"

""It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem."

"This man set the flame of his native genius under the cumbering whin of the untilled field; Lit a fire in the Mearns to illumine Scotland, clearing the sullen soil for a richer yield."

"I mind o' the Ponnage Pule On a shinin' mornin', The saumon fishers Nettin' the bonny brutes — I' the slithery dark o' the boddom O' Charon's Coble Ae day I'll faddom my doots."

"The man that mates wi’ Poverty An’ clasps her tae his banes, Will faither lean an’ lively thochts, A host o’ eident weans."

""Lust is the offspring of a thousand sighs, "Intrigue, deception, and as many lies; "A strange compound of hidden, plotting ill, "To fire with rage, to torture, or to kill" -Lust"

""But he'll ne'er wake us mair, "For Hughie is deid" - Elegy on Wee Hughie - A Pet Canary"

"Up the Noran Water In by Inglismaddy, Annie's got a bairnie That hasna got a daddy. Some say it's Tammas's An' some say it's Chay's; An' naebody expec'it it, Wi' Annie's quiet ways."

""Thou representative of something great, What wert thou in thine unconverted state?" - Reflections on a Banknote"

"Fhairshon had a son, Who married Noah's daughter, And nearly spoiled ta Flood, By drinking up the water. Which he would have done, I at least pelieve it, Had the mixture been Only half Glenlivet."

"Give me but one hour of SCOTLAND, Let me see it ere I die."

"There is yet one place of shelter, Where the foeman cannot come, Where the summons never sounded Of the trumpet or the drum. There again we'll meet our children, Who, on Flodden's trampled sod, For their king and for their country Rendered up their souls to God. There shall we find rest and refuge, With our dear departed brave; And the ashes of the city Be our universal grave!"

"You'll leave this theatre in a different state."

"His Translation is pretty near to the Original; tho' not so close, as [its] Brevity would make one imagine; and it sufficiently appears that he had a right Taste of Poetry in general, and of Virgil's in particular. He shews a true Spirit; and in many Places is very beautiful."

"The late Earl of Lauderdale sent me over his new translation of the Æneis, which he had ended before I ingag'd in the same design. Neither did I then intend it; but, some proposals being afterwards made me by my bookseller, I desir'd his Lordship's leave that I might accept them, which he freely granted; and I have his letter to shew for that permission. He resolv'd to have printed his work; which he might have done two years before I could publish mine; and had perform'd it, if death had not prevented him. But having his manuscript in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author's sense; for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman. His friends, I hear, have yet another and more correct copy of that translation by them, which had they pleas'd to have given the public, the judges must have been convic'd that I have not flatter'd him. Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, ..."

"The names alone of Vicars and Ogilby (the latter of whom has equally violated the Muse of Homer and of Virgil) will supersede the necessity of any further notice of their performances: but the work of Lord Lauderdale is of a much higher character, and is entitled to considerable respect. Though finished before Dryden commenced his Virgilian undertaking, its publication was subsequent to that great man's; and did not take place till after the decease of its noble author, when it was offered to his memory by the just regard of his family. Dryden, to whom it was communicated in MS. by Lord Lauderdale, availed himself very largely of its beauties; having transplanted from it not fewer than three hundred and seventy entire verses into his own page, beside more than double that number, which he has made his own at the expense of no very laborious variation."

"Infernal Gods, who rule the Shades below, Chaos and Phlegethon, ye Realms of Woe, Grant what I've heard I may to light expose, Secrets which Earth, and Night, and Hell inclose."

"He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave."

"In the end, the desolate age always turns instinctively to Classicism, which if nothing else legislates against certain kinds of disappointment."

"I’m always amused by those commentators who nervously insist that the working class’s constant use of the word fuck is really just “a form of punctuation.” It is, however, no more or less then what they dread: an inexhaustible river of smelted wrath, a Phlegethon of ancestral grievance."

"My late friend hated book-jackets, and ripped them all off immediately. I think he felt, somehow, that the book was still trying to sell him its contents after he had paid for it (or turn him in, if he had stolen it). Dejacketed, the book is anonymous and valueless. To translate something immediately into this state is an unequivocal act of proprietorship. You remove a book-jacket just as you make a lover naked: before their complete possession, they must be removed from the currency."

"Postmodernism will soon be confirmed as the American academic orthodoxy because it permits, ultimately, the summary dismissal of that last great inconvenience to the free and democratic intellect: the primary text."

"Yes, I know Marcus Aurelius or Vauvenargues or Chesterton has already said this, and far better; but let’s face it—you weren’t listening then either."

"I never fail to be mystified by those who regard the revision of a former opinion as a sign of weakness."

"The audience will always feel far more generous if, as some point in the evening, a little time has been found for them to applaud themselves."

"A devout Classicist in an age of Romanticism."

"Finlay blended flowers, words, photography, sculpture, and typography into a potluck of avant-garde pieces of art."

"Evening/Sail EVEN -ING WILL COME"

"Concrete poetry began for me with the extraordinary sense that the syntax I had been using , the movement of language within me, af a physical level was no longer there. So it had to be replaced with something else with a syntax and movement that would be true of this new feeling."

"An everyman who happened to accomplish the extraordinary."

"I leave this at your ear for when you awake."

"When the Christian religion reached Great Britain it brought necessarily with it an impulse to intellect as well as to morality..it never fails to produce in all countries to which it comes a resurrection of the nation's virtue and a revival of the nation's political & intellectual energy & genius.Hence we find the very earliets literary names in the early annals of Great Britain are those of Christian missionaries."

"The language of imagination is the native language of man. It is the language of his excited intellect, of his aroused passions, of his devotion, of all the higher moods and temperaments of his mind."

"The language of poetry is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression"

"Every poet is partly creator and partly the creature of circumstances."

"Too great this largess from thy hand I know Yet ask that some few drops of it may light And listened to thy voice, and in it found The very Spring and Soul of Poetry"

"Perhaps the life of every thinking man may be divided into three eras — the era of admiration the era of action the era of repose"

"How dearly, at one time, and how cheaply at another, does Genius purchase immortal fame!"

"Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, But God to man doth speak in solitude."

"Order is the law of all intelligible existence."

"Name the leaves on all the trees, Name the waves on all the seas, Name the notes of all the groves, Thus thou namest all my loves.I do love the young, the old, Maiden modest, virgin bold; Tiny beauties and the tall— Earth has room enough for all!Which is better—who can say?— Mary grave or Lucy gay? She who half her charms conceals, She who flashes while she feels?Why should I my love confine? Why should fair be mine or thine? If I praise a tulip, why Should I pass the primrose by?Paris was a pedant fool Meting beauty by the rule: Pallas? Juno? Venus?—he Should have chosen all the three!"

"Rocking on a lazy billow With roaming eyes, Cushioned on a dreamy pillow, Thou art now wise. Wake the power within thee slumbering, Trim the plot that's in thy keeping, Thou wilt bless the task when reaping Sweet labour's prize."

"Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd, The latest spoken still are deem'd the best."

"Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul."

"Sweet sleep be with us, one and all! And if upon its stillness fall The visions of a busy brain, We'll have our pleasure o'er again, To warm the heart, to charm the sight, Gay dreams to all! good night, good night."

"A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury."

"Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!"

"The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust."