The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
Burns’s song argues that worth lies in character and not in title or wealth, and it looks forward to a time when “man to man, the world o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that”. It was sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Had we never lov’d sae kindly, / Had we never lov’d sae blindly, / Never met—or never parted, / We had ne’er been broken-hearted.
O my Luve is like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;