“If Mr. Purdie will in some way obliterate that drinking song of Burns', the work will do credit to all parties.”

Expressing her strong moral standards as an editor of traditional song · Note to the publisher of the Scottish Minstrel

• Criticism
• Morality
• Music

“I delight in seeing all merely human anticipations contradicted by the high and gracious power that overrules all. What is to come we know not, but surely much praise is due for the present.”

Combining uncertainty about the future with gratitude for the present · Letter to her Dublin correspondent, 1834

• Faith
• Gratitude
• Hope

“I have always felt a deep interest in music, as a divine art, too often made a vehicle of evil, but which, when properly learned, might produce most important results.”

Expressing her conviction that music carries significant moral and spiritual power · Letter to her Edinburgh correspondent, 26 January 1844

• Art
• Morality
• Music