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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Robert Burton Quotes

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Robert Burton
(8 Feb 1577 - 25 Jan 1640)

English clergyman and scholar whose book The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) was centuries ahead of its time in recognizing and suggesting treatment of what is now known as depression.

Science Quotes by Robert Burton (6 quotes)

Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.
— Robert Burton
Anatomy of Melancholy (16th Ed., 1838), 148.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Become (821)  |  Cook (20)  |  Cookery (7)  |  Gentleman (26)  |  Noble (93)

Employment, which Galen calls 'Nature's Physician,' is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery.
— Robert Burton
In Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), 243.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Consider (428)  |  Employment (34)  |  Essential (210)  |  Galen (20)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Human (1512)  |  Indolence (8)  |  Misery (31)  |  Mother (116)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Physician (284)

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 excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.
— Robert Burton
In Louis Klopsch, Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896), 110.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Destroy (189)  |  Diet (56)  |  Disease (340)  |  Excess (23)  |  Extinguish (8)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fountain (18)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Gluttony (6)  |  Health (210)  |  Infirmity (4)  |  Lamp (37)  |  Natural (810)  |  Oil (67)  |  Source (101)

I … was therefore enforced, as a bear doth her whelps, to bring forth this confused lump; I had not time to lick it into form, as she doth her young ones, but even so to publish it.
— Robert Burton
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1857), 24.
Science quotes on:  |  Bear (162)  |  Confused (13)  |  Cub (2)  |  Form (976)  |  Lick (4)  |  Manuscript (10)  |  Publish (42)  |  Time (1911)  |  Young (253)

I’ll change my state with any wretch
Thou canst from gaol of dunghill fetch.
My pain’s past cure, another hell;
I may not in this torment dwell.
Now desperate I hate my life,
Lend me a halter or a knife!
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so damned as melancholy.
— Robert Burton
Science quotes on:  |  Change (639)  |  Cure (124)  |  Grief (20)  |  Hate (68)  |  Jail (4)  |  Knife (24)  |  Life (1870)  |  Melancholy (17)  |  Naught (10)  |  Pain (144)  |  Past (355)  |  Psychology (166)  |  State (505)  |  Torment (18)  |  Wretch (5)

Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
— Robert Burton
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1857), 431.
Science quotes on:  |  Health (210)  |  Lie (370)  |  Man (2252)  |  Money (178)  |  Open (277)  |  Recovery (24)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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