Quotes from Robert Burton

[Desire is] a perpetual rack, or horsemill, according to Austin [Saint Augustine], still going round as in a ring.

Why doth one man's yawning make another yawn?

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

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

We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer…. Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.

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

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

What is life, when wanting love? Night without a morning love's the cloudless summer sun, nature gay adorning.

Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, rivel them up like old apples, make them as so many Anatomies.

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

One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague.

Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun.

What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all.

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

That which Pythagoras said to his scholars of old, may be forever applied to melancholy men, A fabis abstinete, eat no beans.

Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse: envy alone wants both.

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

A mere scholar, a mere ass.

England is paradise for women, and hell for horses: Italy is a paradise for horses, hell for women.

Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword.

Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword. (Hinc Gham Sit Calmus Saevior Ense Patet)

The devil is the author of confusion.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers 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.

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