Robert Burton Quotes

• Be not solitary, be not idle.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• A passion of the brain, as all other melancholy, by reason of corrupt imagination.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Of women’s unnatural, unsatiable lust, what country, what village doth not complain?

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread. The scorching beams under the equinoctial or extremity of cold within the circle Arctic, where the very seas are frozen, cold or torrid zone cannot avoid or expel this heat, fury, and rage of mortal men.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• But this love of ours is immoderate, inordinate, and not to be comprehended in any bounds. It will not contain itself within the union of marriage or apply to one object, but is a wandering, extravagant, a domineering, a boundless, an irrefragable, a destructive passion.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Tobacco, divine, rare, super excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

• What is a ship but a prison?

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Who cannot give good counsel? ’tis cheap, it costs them nothing.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

• All poets are mad.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• A loose, plain, rude writer… I call a spade a spade.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Happiness, Real, Sun

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Morning, Without, Gay

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Year, Officers, Scholars

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Ambition, Power

  Tags in Men

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

  Robert Burton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Enemies, Small, Friends

Robert Burton (32)

Birth:	8th February, 1577
Death:	25th January, 1640
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Author

About

Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.

Related Authors

• Ellen G. White
• Chin-Ning Chu
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• Jennifer Niven
• Catherine Ponder
• David Crystal
• Nelson DeMille
• Charles Spurgeon
• S. Spencer Baker
• Michael D. Higgins

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 7th January

Births

• 1948 - Kenny Loggins
• 1957 - Nicholson Baker
• 1920 - Albert Meltzer
• 1891 - Zora Neale Hurston
• 1830 - Joseph Kirkland

Deaths

• 1943 - Nikola Tesla
• 1944 - Lou Henry Hoover
• 1984 - Alfred Kastler
• 1981 - William Feather
• 1980 - Larry Williams