Robert Burton Quotes

They do not live but linger.

Rob Peter, and pay Paul.

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

What can't be cured must be endured.

[Witches] steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio dæmonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings.

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

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

Make a virtue of necessity.

Joh. 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.

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

It is most true, stylus virum arguit,—our style bewrays us.

Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards.

Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

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