Robert Burton Quotes (121 Quotes)

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

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

Who cannot give good counsel T'is cheap, it costs them nothing.

All our geese are swans.

Most part of a lover's life is full of agony, anxiety, fear and grief, complaints, sighs, suspicions, and cares (heigh-ho my heart is woe), full of silence and irksome solitariness.

If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.

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

I light my candle from their torches.

Can build castles in the air.

All poets are mad.

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

Like the watermen that row one way and look another.

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.

From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword (Hinc quam sit calamus svior ense patet.)

The fear of death is worse than death.

I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.

Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee

This spring has been great for Kmart and other retailers, ... Hopefully, the consumer will continue to come out, the weather will continue to remain warm and we will go right into summer without missing a step.

We can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed.

Italy, a paradise for horses, hell for women, as the proverb goes

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

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

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.

A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.

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

John. 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.

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

Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.

I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.

Though it rain daggers with their points downward.

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

As that great captain, Ziska, would have a drum made of his skin when he was dead, because he thought the very noise of it would put his enemies to flight.

Make a virtue of necessity.

Be not solitary, be not idle.

Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth and therefore to such as are discontent, in woe, fear, sorrow, or dejected, it is a most present remedy

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

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

A quiet mind cureth all.

Though they philosophers write contemptu glori, yet as Hieron observes, they will put their names to their books.

Everything, saith Epictetus, hath two handles, the one to be held by, the other not.

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

Women wear the breeches.

The devil is the author of confusion.

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

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

Smile with an intent to do mischief, or cozen him whom he salutes.

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

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

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