“For ignorance is the mother of devotion, as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness.”

— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 4, 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.”

“Go where he will, the wise man is at home, his hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.”

“Arms are of little value in the field unless there is wise counsel at home.”

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”

“The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents.”

“Hence vain deluding Joys, the brood of Folly without father bred!”

“Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”