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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Burton

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Burton

A mere madness to live like a wretch and die rich.

Carpet knights.

Comparisons are odious.

Contention is a hydra’s head; the more they strive, the more they may.

England is a paradise for women and a hell for horses; Italy a paradise for horses and a hell for women.

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

Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy.

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by an excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

Idleness is the badge of gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the step-mother of discipline, the chief author of mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion on which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases.

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

Make a virtue of necessity.

Melancholy advanceth men’s conceits more than any humour whatever.

Mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.

Rich men are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors.

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

Temperance is a bridle of gold.

There is a Cato in every man; a severe censor of his manners. And he that reverences this judge will seldom do anything he need repent of.

True nobility is derived from virtue, not birth.

Wait upon him whom thou art to speak to with thine eye; for there be many cunning men that have secret heads and transparent countenances.

Wait upon him whom thou art to speak to with thine eye; for there be many cunning men that have secret heads and transparent countenances.

What can’t be cured must be endured.

Wit without employment is a disease.

You may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, and brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, calamity, and danger from man.