Robert Burton Quotes

Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself.

What can't be cured must be endured.

Though it rain daggers with their points downward.

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

Melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference: melancholy fears without a cause, this upon great occasion; melancholy is caused by fear and grief, but this torment procures them and all extremity of bitterness.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the 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.

Going as if he trod upon eggs.

What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation?

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

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

Fabricius finds certain spots and clouds in the sun.

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

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

Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel.

Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.