Vulgar words in The Letters of Robert Burns (Page 1)

This book at a glance

ass x 1
bastard x 1
blockhead x 4
damn x 17
hussy x 2
            

Page 1

~   ~   ~   Sentence 140   ~   ~   ~

I am drawn by conviction like a Man, not by a halter like an Ass."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 798   ~   ~   ~

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have just time for the carrier, to tell you that I received your letter, of which I shall say no more but what a lass of my acquaintance said of her bastard wean; she said she "didna ken wha was the father exactly, but she suspected it was some o' thae bonny blackguard smugglers, for it was like them."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,038   ~   ~   ~

I will close my letter with this tribute my heart bids me pay you--the many ties of acquaintance and friendship which I have, or think I have in life, I have felt along the lines, and damn them, they are almost all of them of such frail contexture, that I am sure they would not stand the breath of the least adverse breeze of fortune; but from you, my ever dear Sir, I look with confidence for the Apostolic love that shall wait on me "through good report and bad report"--the love which Solomon emphatically says "is strong as death."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,858   ~   ~   ~

He who sees you as I have done, and does not love you, deserves to be damn'd for his stupidity!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,859   ~   ~   ~

He who loves you, and would injure you, deserves to be doubly damn'd for his villany!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,254   ~   ~   ~

I would detest myself as a tasteless, unfeeling, insipid, infamous blockhead!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,273   ~   ~   ~

Damn'd sophistry!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,540   ~   ~   ~

There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas; that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25--1.5--1.75 (or some such fractional matter); so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,786   ~   ~   ~

For my old, capricious, but good-natured hussy of a muse, By banks of Nith I sat and wept When Coila I thought on, In midst thereof I hung my harp The willow trees upon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,185   ~   ~   ~

When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,364   ~   ~   ~

My Dear Sir,--I was half in thoughts not to have written to you at all, by way of revenge for the two damn'd business letters you sent me.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,455   ~   ~   ~

Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills: capricious foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead, and is almost, without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,684   ~   ~   ~

9th, 1790._ My Dear Sir,--That damn'd mare of yours is dead.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,691   ~   ~   ~

I fed her up and had her in fine order for Dumfries fair, when, four or five days before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck--with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets; and, in short, the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight and forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died and be damn'd to her!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,732   ~   ~   ~

If there be any truth in the orthodox faith of these churches, I am damn'd past redemption, and what is worse, damn'd to all eternity.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,904   ~   ~   ~

Take these two guineas, and place them over against that damn'd account of yours which has gagged my mouth these five or six months.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,033   ~   ~   ~

God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, and such is my friend Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the almighty fiat of his Creator.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,083   ~   ~   ~

can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the rest of the damn'd hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness--can you speak peace to a troubled soul?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,084   ~   ~   ~

_Miserable perdu_ that I am, I have tried every thing that used to amuse me, but in vain; here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every click of the clock as it slowly, slowly numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, damn them, are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside, and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted head--and there is none to pity me.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,178   ~   ~   ~

It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the honest ploughman: so without ceremony he unhooked the caldron from off the fire, and, pouring out the damn'd ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,328   ~   ~   ~

and from the damn'd, dark insinuations of hellish, groundless envy too!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,511   ~   ~   ~

Round, and round, and round they go,--Mundell's ox, that drives his cotton mill, is their exact prototype--without an idea or wish beyond their circle; fat, sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented; while here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a damn'd melange of fretfulness and melancholy; not enough of the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to repose me in torpor; my soul flouncing and fluttering round her tenement, like a wild finch, caught amid the horrors of winter, and newly thrust into a cage.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,596   ~   ~   ~

I write you from the regions of hell, amid the horrors of the damn'd.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,604   ~   ~   ~

There was a Miss I---too, a woman of fine sense, gentle and unassuming manners--do make, on my part, a miserable damn'd wretch's best apology to her.

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