Robert Burns' Quotes

Robert Burns, also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was born 25 January 1759 in Dumfries, Scotland. A Scottish poet and lyricist, he is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. Burns Night is celebrated on the 25 January each year.

Burns’s poems are considered the foundation for the Romantic movement. Burns’s poems included works such 'Tam o’ Shanter', 'To a Mouse', and of course, 'Auld Lang Syne'. We've chosen a selection of Burns' quotes from such works.

25 Burns' Quotes

1. “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.”
   - To a Mouse, Collected Poems of Robert Burns
2. "Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing."
   - The Cotter's Saturday Night
3. "Mankind is a science that defies definitions."
4. "Now's the day and now's the hour."
   - Robert Bruce's March To Bannockburn
5. "A women can make an average man great, and a great man average."
6. "There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing."
   - Collected Poems of Robert Burns
7. "But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it's bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever."
   - Tam o' Shanter
8. "There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing."
   - Collected Poems of Robert Burns
9. "Life is but a day at most."
   - Written In Friars' Carse Hermitage (Second Version)
10. "My heart 's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart 's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer."
    - My Heart's in the Highlands
11. "How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favours of the powerful."
12. "Nae man can tether time or tide."
    - Tam o' Shanter
13. "We two have paddled in the stream,
    from morning sun till dine,
    But seas between us broad have roared
    since auld lang syne."
    - Auld Lang Syne
14. "If there's another world, he lives in bliss; if there is none, he made the best of this."
    - The Poems Of Robert Burns
15. "Dare to be honest and fear no labor."
    - The Prose Works Of Robert Burns
16. "We’ll tak a cup o’kindness yet for auld lang syne."
    - Auld Lang Syne
17. "To see her is to love her,
    And love but her forever;
    For nature made her what she is,
    And never made anither!"
    - Bonnie Lesley
18. "Painters and poets have liberty to lie."
19. "My love is like a red, red rose
    That's newly sprung in June:
    My love is like the melody
    That's sweetly played in tune."
    - A Red, Red Rose
20. "Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects."
21. "The heart that is generous and kind most resembles God."
22. "But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever."
    - The Works Of Robert Burns
23. "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot."
    - Auld Lang Syne
24. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
    The man's the gowd for a' that.
    For a' that an a' that."
    - A Man's A Man For A' That, st. 1 (1795)
25. "I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence."
    - The Works Of Robert Burns