Robert Burton

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.

One religion is as true as another.

[Quoting Seneca] Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, "and these," said she, "are my jewels."

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.

All places are distant from heaven alike.

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

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.

The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies.

Like him in Æsop, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel.

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

Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards; their worthiest captains, best wits, greatest scholars, bravest spirits in all our annals, have been base [born].

Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.

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.

Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did "go from door to door and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him."

Every man for himself, his own ends, the Devil for all.