ROBERT BURTON

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

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

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

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

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

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

A good conscience is a continual feast.

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

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.

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.

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

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

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

A quiet mind cureth all.

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

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

Employment, which Galen calls "nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness, that Indolence is justly considered as the mother of Misery.

The greatest enemy to man is man.

The Commonwealth of Venice in their armoury have this inscription, "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war.

What can't be cured must be endured.

Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?

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

Be not solitary, be not idle