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Are we a piece of machinery that, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod?

— Robert Burns

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: letter to Mrs. Dunlop, New Year-Day Morning (1789). Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 147-148.
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Robert Burns

There's some are fou o' love divine;
There's some are fou o' brandy.

They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.

The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786)

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

A Winter Night (1787)

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787)

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

Perhaps it may turn out a sang:
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.

The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786)

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new.

The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786)

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Topics

Religion

More quotes by Robert Burns

The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley;
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy.

Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious.

Tam o' Shanter (1790)

Nae man can tether time or tide.

Tam o' Shanter (1790)

What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.

Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Tam o' Shanter (1790)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Burns (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.