Robert Burton

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

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

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

“Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.”

“All Poets are mad.”

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

“What a glut of books! Who can read them?”

“Idleness is an appendix to nobility.”

“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,...”

“Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards.”

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

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

“Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.”

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

“Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.”

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

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