"Affliction's sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!"

"Dare to be honest and fear no labor."

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings."

"Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve."

"Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame."

"The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend."

"The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, and violets bathe in the wet o' the morn."

"There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing."

"Suspense is worse than disappointment."

"I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence."

"Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!"

"Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects."

"His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, Shewed him the gentleman and scholar."

"And there begins a lang digression about the lords o' the creation."