Quotes from Robert Burton

He that increaseth wisdom, increaseth sorrow.

What cannot be cured must be endured.

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.

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

If you like not my writing, go read something else.

Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

Every man for himself, the devil for all.

A quiet mind cureth all.

Let thy fortune be what it will, 'tis thy mind alone that makes thee poor or rich, miserable or happy.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as [love] can do with a single thread.

All Poets are mad.

Wine is strong, the king is strong, women are strong, but truth overcometh all things.

We love neither God nor our neighbor as we should. Our love in spiritual things is "too defective, in worldly things too excessive, there is a jar in both." We love the world too much; God too little; our neighbor not at all, or for our own ends.

The eyes are the harbingers of love, and the first step of love is sight.

I light my candle from their torches.

Now go and brag of thy present happiness, whosoever thou art, brag of thy temperature, of thy good parts, insult, triumph, and boast; thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayst be dejected, how many several ways, by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent, an ague, &c.; how many sudden accidents may procure thy ruin, what a small tenure of happiness thou hast in this life, how weak and silly a creature thou art.

A good conscience is a continual feast, but a galled conscience is as great a torment as can possibly happen, a still baking oven (so Pierius in his Hieroglyph compares it), another hell.

that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment.

One religion is as true as another.

If heaven be so fair,the sun so fair, how much fairer shall He be that made them fair? For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures, proportionally the maker of them is seen.

If you have no dreams, you shall live within them

As a fat body is more subject to diseases, so are rich men to absurdities and fooleries, to many casualties and cross inconveniences.

It is an old saying, "A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword"; and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrile and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-plays, or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever.