Robert Burton

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

I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva__ tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?

That which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholizing.

A quiet mind cureth all.

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

What is life, when wanting love? Night without a morning; love's the cloudless summer sun, nature gay adorning.

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.

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

All Poets are mad.

Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.

To think well of every other man's condition and to dislike our own is one of the misfortunes of human nature.

Employment... is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered the mother of misery.

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

No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw or hold so fast as love can do with a twined thread.

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

If the world will be gulled let it be gulled.

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