O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!
Burns watches a louse crawl over a fashionable lady’s bonnet in church, and the poem ends on this couplet about vanity and self-knowledge. The full title adds “on seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at church”.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
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.
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;