Robert Burns (1759–96) is the unofficial national poet of Scotland. Known in his lifetime as The Caledonian Bard, he wrote lyrics and songs in Scots and English. He is also famous for his amorous dalliances and his rebellion against extreme Calvinism and religious orthodoxy.
Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, Burns was inspired by the works of Alexander Pope, Henry Mackenzie, and Laurence Sterne. Burns worked as a tenant farmer and earned the label “The Ploughman Poet” because his poems complemented the growing literary taste for romanticism and pastoral pleasures.
Burns’s first volume of poems, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786,) commonly known as the Kilmarnock Edition, aroused great enthusiasm, and he was fêted in Edinburgh’s social circles. The satire ‘The Jolly Beggars’ (1786) and the narrative poem ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ (1791) are among his most famous poems. Burns’s collection of over 200 old Scottish songs for engraver James Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803) includes the famous lyrics ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘Ye Banks and Braes.’
Burns died in poverty at the age of 37. His work inspired other Romantic poets. He continues to be very popular for the lyrical quality of his poems and songs—they are sung by revolutionaries (e.g., on Mao Zedong’s Long March,) as well as on New Year’s Eve and at Burns Suppers, typically observed near his birthday, 25 January.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert Burns
Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands mourn.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Cruelty
Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Honesty
Dearly bought the hidden treasure, finer feelings can bestow; chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest notes of woe.
—Robert Burns
Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Go fetch to me a pint o wine, an fill it in a silver tassie.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Wine
Midnight—that hour of night’s black arch the keystone.
—Robert Burns
There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Uncertainty, Certainty
Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursel’s as ithers see us.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Self-Discovery
Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!
—Robert Burns
Topics: Silence
When matters are desperate we must put on a desperate face.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Faces, Face
Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Hope
Love’s first snow-drop, virgin kiss.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Kisses
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley.
—Robert Burns
To make three guineas do the work of five.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Economy
Firmness, both in suffering and exertion, is a character which I would wish to possess.—I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly feeble resolve.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Determination, Complaining
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
gang aft a-gley.
—Robert Burns
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord aright.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Prayer
And the spring comes slowly up this way.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Seasons
The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air.
—Robert Burns
Suspense is worst than disappointment.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Disappointment, Anxiety, Worry
When chill November’s surly blast make fields and forest bare.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Seasons
I could never pour out my inmost soul without reserve to any human being, without danger of one day repenting my confidence.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Confidence
Prudent, cautious self-control, is wisdom’s root.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Control, Self-Control
Let us do or die.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Action
I pick my favorite quotation and store them in my mind as ready armor, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Quotations
I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Laughter
Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Doubt
Some say kissing is a sin; but if it was na lawful, lawyers would na allow it; if it was na holy, ministers would na do it; if it was na modest, maidens would na take it; if it was na plenty, puir folk would na get it.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Kisses
Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met—or never parted—we had never been broken-hearted.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Sadness
How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.
—Robert Burns
Topics: Kindness
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