"Robert Burns" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the banks of the Ohio, and there placed in an unmarked and neglected grave. The troops present all fired their volleys in such a ludicrously straggling manner as to recall the dying request of Robert Burns that the awkward squad might not fire over his grave. Then the drums and fifes struck up merry strains, the military marched away, and only the scene of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... breathing upon them; they believed that the millennium was near, and that they would not die, but be translated. It appears that they had community of wives and lived on funds provided by the richer members. Robert Burns, the poet, in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral. In 1785 White and Mrs Buchan published a Divine Dictionary, but the sect broke up on the death of its founder in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... too big, and his mouth too wide—but his teeth are like pearl—and he has such eyes!—especially when your ladyship spoke to him. I don't think you looked at his eyes—they are quite deep and dark, and full of glow, like what you read to us in the letter from that lady, about Robert Burns." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... need no picturesque or romantic accessories to give them due relief: looked at by all lights they are the same. Since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns;—but there was a serpent in his field also! Yet but for his fault we could never have seen brought out the brave and patriotic modesty with which he owned it. Shame on him who could bear to think of fault in this rich jewel, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I was amused so much that, had I not remembered where I was, I must, like my friends mentioned by Robert Burns in his "Twa Dogs," have "barked wi' joy," because I thought it so strange. Here was a Queen's Counsel, a man of so proper a countenance that I do not think it ever smiled in its life, and so very devoted to his profession ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... "Robert Burns had twins and a rather bad character, but after he met his bonnie Jean he wrote very beautiful poetry. A poet's life is usually sad anyhow—full of disappointment and ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... men—a contrast to one another in almost every respect—to bring once more into British song a strong individual feeling, and with it a new warmth and directness of speech. These were William Cowper (1731-1800) and Robert Burns (1759-96). Cowper spoke out of his own life experience, his agony, his love, his worship and despair; and straightway the varnish that had glittered over all our poetry since the time of Dryden melted away. Cowper had scribbled verses ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 1759, a few months later than Robert Burns, he was a native of Marbach in Wuertemberg. His father had been a surgeon in the army, and was now in the pay of the Duke of Wuertemberg; and the benevolence, integrity and devoutness of his parents were expanded and beautified in the character of their son. His education was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Mrs Constable brought her strange laddies with her, as well as her own dear boys, and many and gay were the songs they sang and the games they played. Two of the songs they sang were the following, from the beloved lips of Robert Burns: ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner by the window. Or the table just under that really lovely little portrait of Robert Burns—would there be any more propitious place in New York at which to fashion verses? There would be no interruptions, such as make versifying almost impossible in a newspaper office. The friendly bartenders ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... instrumental setting of this composer's songs is so elaborate and beautiful oftentimes, we frequently find him at his best in treating words full of the simplicity and naivete of the old Volkslied. Many of his songs are set to the poems of Robert Burns, one of the few British poets who have been able to give their works the subtile singing quality which comes not merely of the rhythm but of the feeling of the verse. Heine also furnished him with the themes of many of his finest songs, for this poet has been an inexhaustible treasure-trove ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Robert Burns. Edited from the best Printed and Manuscript authorities, with Glossarial Index, Notes, and a Biographical Memoir by ALEXANDER SMITH. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... When Robert Burns was invited by Dr. Blacklock to visit Edinburgh, Gilbert was struggling in the unthrifty farm of Mosgiel, and toiling late and early to keep a house over the heads of his aged mother and unprotected sisters. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... the minstrel girl in "The Fair Maid of Perth," not the Duchesse de Langeais, were his heroines. But better than anything that ever got from the heart of a man into printer's ink, he loved the poetry of Robert Burns. "Death and Dr. Hornbook" and "The Jolly Beggars," Burns's "Reply to his Tailor," he often read aloud to himself in his office, late at night, after a glass of hot toddy. He used to read "Tam o'Shanter" to Thea Kronborg, and he got her some of the songs, set to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... night before the departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent. Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one it was. It was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... generation idle rich—arrogant and parasitical, and on the other, the actual producer, economically helpless and denied access to the means of production unless he "beg his lordly fellow worm to give him leave to toil," as Robert Burns has it. ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... is beautifully laid out and forms one of the most attractive features of Adelaide. The city has a number of good statues, chief among which are copies of the Farnese Hercules (Victoria Square) and of Canova's Venus (North Terrace), statues of Queen Victoria and Robert Burns, Sir Thomas Elder's statue at the university, and a memorial (1905) over the grave of Colonel Light, founder of the colony, in Light Square. Adelaide is governed by a mayor and six aldermen elected by the whole body of the ratepayers, and is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... parks, comprising 402 acres; the most notable is Washington Park, which contains two well known statues—one of Robert Burns, by Charles Caverley, and the bronze and rock fountain, "Moses at the Rock of Horeb," by J. Massey Rhind. The city's filtration system is of special interest to engineers; it occupies 20 acres, has eight filter beds, and filters ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price;—as life is. The people began to live: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... itself is preserved mainly by the change of setting. This appears in the following outline of The Robin's Christmas Song, an English tale which is the same as the Scotch Robin's Yule-Song, which has been attributed to Robert Burns. This tale illustrates one main line ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... published, anonymously, the Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... wrecked old aristocracies that seemed to have firm hold on permanence. If one would feel again the thrill which men felt when first the old distinctions lost their power, one should read once more the songs of Robert Burns. They often seem commonplaces to us now, but they ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... All who love Robert Burns have their affection for him rooted in the human quality of him; and Burns's oneness with the rest of us is revealed by the earthiness of his words. They smell of home. They have the fragrance of trees ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... is Robert Burns, bearing about in his body also the marks of his ownership. For this matchless genius was wrecked and ruined not by the wiles of him of the cloven foot, but by temptations that have been called "godlike." This glorious youth was not beguiled from the path by a desire to be a cold ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... life preceding his appointment as a Bow Street magistrate (an appointment comparable only to the choice of Robert Burns as an exciseman) were marked, as we have seen, by lively passages in the political arena, and a steady output of political journalism. Indeed, by this time, the public must have associated swingeing denunciations of Jacobites, and glowing eulogies of the British Constitution, with Harry Fielding's ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden |
