Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

100 Sourced Quotes

View all Robert Burton Quotes
No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.

Robert Burton
A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

Robert Burton
When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done.

Robert Burton
I had a heavy heart and an ugly head, a kind of impostume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of.

Robert Burton
As if they had heard that enchanted horn of Astolpho, that English duke in Ariosto, which never sounded but all his auditors were mad, and for fear ready to make away [with] themselves … they are a company of giddy-heads, afternoon men.

Robert Burton
Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.

Robert Burton
The commonwealth of Venice in their armory have this inscription: "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war."

Robert Burton
Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.

Robert Burton
Who cannot give good counsel? 'Tis cheap, it costs them nothing.

Robert Burton
As clear and as manifest as the nose in a man's face.

Robert Burton
Joh. Mayor, in the first book of his "History of Scotland," contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread; it was objected to him, then living at Paris, that his countrymen fed on oats and base grain…. And yet Wecker out of Galen calls it horse-meat, and fitter juments than men to feed on.

Robert Burton
Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel.

Robert Burton
We can make mayors and officers every year, but not scholars.

Robert Burton
See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.

Robert Burton
Felix Plater notes of some young physicians, that study to cure diseases, catch them themselves, will be sick, and appropriate all symptoms they find related of others to their own persons.

Robert Burton
[The rich] are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors.

Robert Burton
The Chinese say that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blinde.

Robert Burton
As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.

Robert Burton
No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.

Robert Burton
I had not time to lick it into form, as she [a bear] doth her young ones.

Robert Burton
I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.

Robert Burton
The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Burton
The pen worse than the sword.

Robert Burton