Robert Burton

“What a glut of books! Who can read them?”

“I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.”

“All Poets are mad.”

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

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