“God knows, I'm no the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be.”
To The Reverend John M'Math, st. 8
Posthumous Pieces (1799)
On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland, st. 1 (1793)
The Banks o' Doon, st. 1
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)
“Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.”
Stanza 9
The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786)
Handsome Nell (1773) (also known as "My Handsome Nell"), st. 6.
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)
“Suspense is worse than disappointment.”
Letter to Thomas Sloan, (1 September 1791)
The Jolly Beggars, chorus
Posthumous Pieces (1799)
“The white moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, O!”
Misquotation by W. B. Yeats of Burns's "Open the Door to me, Oh" http://www.robertburns.org/works/397.shtml (1793) in Ideas of good and evil (1907), p. 241; the original reads: "The wan Moon is setting beyond the white wave,/ And Time is setting with me, oh!"
Misattributed
Here's a Health to Them That's Awa, st. 1
Posthumous Pieces (1799)
“This day, Time winds th' exhausted chain,
To run the twelvemonth's length again.”
New Year's Day, st. 1 (1790)
“Nature's law,
That man was made to mourn.”
Man Was Made to Mourn, st. 4 (1786)
“And may you better reck the rede,
Than ever did the adviser!”
Stanza 11.
Epistle to a Young Friend (1786)
Address to the Unco Guid, st. 7 (1787)
“Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name.”
Stanza 13
The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786)
“Some wee short hours ayont the twal.”
Death and Dr. Hornbook.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Affliction's sons are brothers in distress;
A brother to relieve,—how exquisite the bliss!”
A Winter Night.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Beauty's of a fading nature
Has a season and is gone!”
Will Ye Go and Marry Katie? (1764)
“Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
Man was made to Mourn.”
Man was Made to Mourn (1786)