Robert Burton Quotes

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

[The rich] are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors.

Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.

I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

Like Aesop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.

A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.

The Chinese say that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blinde.

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

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.

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.

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

All places are distant from heaven alike.

A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.

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