Robert Burton quotes:

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wit without employment is a disease

If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

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

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

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

That which is a law today is none tomorrow

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

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

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

Be not solitary, be not idle

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

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

What a glut of books! Who can read them?