Robert Burton (1577 – 1640)
English scholar at Oxford University, whose chief claim to fame is for writing The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Every schoolboy hath that famous testament of Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus at his fingers' end.
I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones.
I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.
Out of too much learning become mad.
One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague.
Everything, saith Epictetus, hath two handles,—the one to be held by, the other not.
[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.
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.
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.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
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.
One religion is as true as another.
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.
"Let me not live," saith Aretine's Antonia, "if I had not rather hear thy discourse than see a play."
See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
They are proud in humility; proud that they are not proud.
Be not solitary, be not idle.
Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.
Birds of a feather will gather together.
Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.