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No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If were looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldnt test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. Patrick Jake 'P.J.' O'Rourke		Wednesday Sep 23, 2026
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

About Robert Burton

	Robert Burton
	(1577-1640) English Clergyman and Scholar

Popular Robert Burton Quotes

Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

Felix Plater notes of some young physicians, that study to cure diseases, catch them themselves, will be sick, and appropriate all symptoms they find related of others to their own persons.

Why doth one man's yawning make another yawn?

Our wrangling lawyers ... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell.

I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword (Hinc quam sit calamus sævior ense patet.)

Women wear the breeches.

I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.

The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.

Make a virtue of necessity.

Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.

As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.

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

Going as if he trod upon eggs.

Out of too much learning become mad.

Were it not that they are loath to lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges.

Tobacco, divine, rare, super excellent tobacco, which goes beyond all their 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.

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

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

Fabricius finds certain spots and clouds in the sun.

Smile with an intent to do mischief, or cozen him whom he salutes.

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

Every schoolboy hath that famous testament of Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus at his fingers' end.

We can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars; kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed.

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.

Like the watermen that row one way and look another.

Rob Peter, and pay Paul.

One religion is as true as another.

Though it rain daggers with their points downward.

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

They are proud in humility; proud in that they are not proud.

To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun.

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

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword.

England is a paradise for women and hell for horses; Italy a paradise for horses, hell for women....

The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience.

John. 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.

They do not live but linger.

He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.

And hold one another's noses to the grindstone hard.

A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.

Though they [philosophers] write contemptu gloriæ, yet as Hieron observes, they will put their names to their books.

Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.

Naught so sweet as melancholy.

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

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread.

I light my candle from their torches.

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.

For 'ignorance is the mother of devotion,' as all the world knows.

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator.

Like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth only keep it because it shall do nobody else good, hurting himself and others.

'Let me not live,' saith Aretine's Antonia, 'if I had not rather hear thy discourse than see a play.'

The commonwealth of Venice in their armoury have this inscription: 'Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war.'

Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.

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

Seneca thinks the gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity.

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

Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, when he came to a strange city, to worship by all means the gods of the place.

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

All our geese are swans.

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

Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.

I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones.

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

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

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.

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

All places are distant from heaven alike.

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

[Desire] is a perpetual rack, or horse mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring.

To these crocodile tears they will add sobs, fiery sighs, and sorrowful countenance.

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

They have consciences that will stretch.

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

Christ himself was poor.... And as he was himself, so he informed his apostles and disciples, they were all poor, prophets poor, apostles poor.

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

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

Can build castles in the air.

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

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

Birds of a feather will gather together.

Many things happen between the cup and the lip.

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

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.'

Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself.

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

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].

Who cannot give good counsel? T'is cheap, it costs them nothing.

Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun.

Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honour, A great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one defines it a pleasant poison.

All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as Melancholy.

All poets are mad.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.

Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will Admit of an excuse: envy alone wants both.

Hope and patience are two sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals, the softest cushions to lean on in adversity.

No happiness is like unto it, no love so great as that of man and wife, no such comfort as a sweet wife.

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

The fear of death is worse than death.

They are proud in their humility, proud that they are not proud.

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