Richard Francis Burton Quotes

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain, When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?

Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.

Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defined, What your five wits may wot ye weet; what is you please to dub "designíd;" You bring down Heavíen to vulgar Earth; your maker like yourselves you make, You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break; You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be, That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of law to see?

Grant an Idea, Primal Cause, the Causing Cause, why crave for more? Why strive its depth and breadth to mete, to trace its work, its aid to íimplore? Unknown, Incomprehensible, whateíer you choose to call it, call; But leave it vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical.

How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show? Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know? How may the passing Now contain the standing Now — Eternity? — An endless is without a was, the be and never the to-be?

There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?

How Thought is imp'otent to divine the secret which the gods defend, The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend. Eternal Morrows make our day; our is is aye to be till when Night closes in; 'tis all a dream, and yet we die, — and then and then? And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I," When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:

Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men.

The Translator has ventured to entitle a "Lay of the Higher Law" the following composition, which aims at being in advance of its time; and he has not feared the danger of collision with such unpleasant forms as the "Higher Culture." The principles which justify the name are as follows: — The Author asserts that Happiness and Misery are equally divided and distributed in the world. He makes Self-cultivation, with due regard to others, the sole and sufficient object of human life. He suggests that the affections, the sympathies, and the "divine gift of Pity" are man's highest enjoyments. He advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper suspicion of "Facts, the idlest of superstitions." Finally, although destructive to appearance, he is essentially reconstructive. For other details concerning the Poem and the Poet, the curious reader is referred to the end of the volume.

Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'.

I have struggled for forty-seven years, distinguishing myself honourably in every way that I possibly could. I never had a compliment, nor a "thank you," nor a single farthing. I translate a doubtful book in my old age, and I immediately make sixteen thousand guineas. Now that I know the tastes of England, we need never be without money.

The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the consequences of that imbecility are particularly cruel and afflicting. … Shall we ever understand that ignorance is not innocence?