The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley,
Burns wrote the poem in November 1785, as its full title says, “on turning her up in her nest with the plough”. The line is the source of the title of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men.
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;