The collection / 104 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1608 AD

Naught so sweet as melancholy.

Robert Burton / quote

02c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

03c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

04c. 1608 AD

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.

Robert Burton / quote

05c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

06c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

07c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

08c. 1608 AD

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.

Robert Burton / quote

09c. 1608 AD

Like the watermen that row one way and look another.

Robert Burton / quote

10c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

11c. 1608 AD

Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself.

Robert Burton / quote

12c. 1608 AD

Rob Peter, and pay Paul.

Robert Burton / quote

13c. 1608 AD

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Robert Burton / quote

Meaning: Saving a small amount can be a poor bargain if it creates a much larger cost. Judge the total consequences of a decision rather than only the immediate saving.

14c. 1608 AD

Women wear the breeches.

Robert Burton / quote

15c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

16c. 1608 AD

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.

Robert Burton / quote

17c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

18c. 1608 AD

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

Robert Burton / quote

19c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

20c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

21c. 1608 AD

Can build castles in the air.

Robert Burton / quote

22c. 1608 AD

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.

Robert Burton / quote

23c. 1608 AD

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

Robert Burton / quote

24c. 1608 AD

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.

Robert Burton / quote