Richard Francis Burton Short Quotes

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Why meet we on the bridge of Time to 'change one greeting and to part?

Richard Francis Burton
Life, atom of that Infinite Space that stretcheth, 'twixt the Here and There.

Richard Francis Burton
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.

Richard Francis Burton
Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder.

Richard Francis Burton
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Richard Francis Burton
Is not man born with a love of change — an Englishman to be discontented — an Anglo-Indian to grumble?

Richard Francis Burton
Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands.

Richard Francis Burton
"'Tis blessed to believe"; you say: The saying may be true enow
And it can add to Life a light: — only remains to show us how.

Richard Francis Burton
Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.

Richard Francis Burton
Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die

Richard Francis Burton
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton
As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.

Richard Francis Burton
What is the Truth? was askt of yore. Reply all object Truth is one
As twain of halves aye makes a whole; the moral Truth for all is none.

Richard Francis Burton
There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Richard Francis Burton
That gentle Moon, the lesser light, the Lover's lamp, the Swain's delight, A ruined world, a globe burnt out, a corpse upon the road of night.

Richard Francis Burton
The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine.

Richard Francis Burton
What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,
When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?

Richard Francis Burton
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
IV

Richard Francis Burton
Conquer thyself, till thou hast done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.

Richard Francis Burton
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men.
III

Richard Francis Burton
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

Richard Francis Burton
"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

Richard Francis Burton
With God's foreknowledge man's free will! what monster-growth of human brain,
What powers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?

Richard Francis Burton
What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,
We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die.

Richard Francis Burton
"Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key;"
So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven, — he.

Richard Francis Burton
Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary,
where live his little span of life secure?
and 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms
that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?

Richard Francis Burton
Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'.

Richard Francis Burton