Robert Burton Quotes

If the world will be gulled let it be gulled.

[T]hou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.

That which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing.

To think well of every other man's condition and to dislike our own is one of the misfortunes of human nature.

A true saying it is, ‘Desire hath no rest;‘ is infinite in itself, endless; and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring.

I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.

Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all the surest reposals the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.

No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw or hold so fast as love can do with a twined thread.

All Poets are mad.

Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.

No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find,My subject is of man, and human kind.

They are proud in humility proud that they are not proud.

Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.

Employment... is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered the mother of misery.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?