Robert Burton Quotes

Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?

They [i.e. ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top.

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.

Be not solitary, be not idle

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

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

If you like not my writing, go read something else.

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

[T]hou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.

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

We can make mayors and officers every year, but not scholars.

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

Let thy fortune be what it will, 'tis thy mind alone that makes thee poor or rich, miserable or happy.

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.