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

— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section 2, member 1, subsection 2

About Robert Burton

1577 – 1640

English scholar, author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy".

“I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.”

“All my joys to this are folly / Naught so sweet as melancholy.”

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

“The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.”

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.”