Robert Burton Quotes

101 Sourced Quotes

Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards; their worthiest captains, best wits, greatest scholars, bravest spirits in all our annals, have been base [born].

Robert Burton
Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.

Robert Burton
Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases... but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.

Robert Burton
Our wrangling lawyers... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter,—some of them in hell.

Robert Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse; envy alone wants both. Other sins last but for awhile; the gut may be satisfied, anger remits, hatred hath an end, envy never ceaseth.

Robert Burton
Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.

Robert Burton
Virtue, wisdom, goodness and real worth; like the loadstone, never lose their power. These are the true graces, which are linked hand in hand, because it is by their influence that human hearts are so firmly united to each other.

Robert Burton
[Ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top.

Robert Burton
It is most true, stylus virum arguit, — our style bewrays us.

Robert Burton
The mind, in short, of an ambitious man is never satisfied; his soul is harassed with unceasing anxieties, and his heart harrowed up by increasing disquietude.

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

Robert Burton
It is most true, stilus virum arguit —our style betrays us.

Robert Burton
"Let me not live," saith Aretine's Antonia, "if I had not rather hear thy discourse than see a play."

Robert Burton
Christ himself was poor... And as he was himself, so he informed his apostles and disciples, they were all poor, prophets poor, apostles poor.

Robert Burton
England is a paradise for women and hell for horses; Italy a paradise for horses, hell for women, as the diverb goes.

Robert Burton
And hold one another's noses to the grindstone hard.

Robert Burton
They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

Robert Burton
Women wear the breeches... in a word, the world turned upside downward.

Robert Burton
Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, when he came to a strange city, to worship by all means the gods of the place.

Robert Burton
Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

Robert Burton
Like the watermen that row one way and look another.

Robert Burton
Fabricius finds certain spots and clouds in the sun.

Robert Burton
The pen worse than the sword.

Robert Burton
The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience.

Robert Burton
Why doth one man's yawning make another yawn?

Robert Burton
All my joys to this are folly
Naught so sweet as melancholy.

Robert Burton
Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.

Robert Burton
Like Aesop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.

Robert Burton
Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long.

Robert Burton
For "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows.

Robert Burton