Robert Burton Biography Quotes 17 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robert Burton was born in 1577 in the Midlands of England, most commonly said to be at Lindley in Leicestershire, into a provincial gentry family that valued learning. He received a grammar-school education that prepared him for university, and by the mid-1590s he had matriculated at Oxford. He first studied at Brasenose College before moving to Christ Church, where he spent most of his adult life. At Oxford he took the usual progression of degrees in arts and then divinity, and he settled into the habits of a scholar: reading widely, composing notes, and cultivating a disciplined routine amid the intellectual ferment of the university.

Oxford Scholar and Clergyman
Burton became a long-resident member of Christ Church, then one of the leading colleges of England. He held offices and taught, but his reputation grew less through classroom instruction than through the breadth of his erudition and his presence in the libraries. The newly established Bodleian Library, founded by Sir Thomas Bodley, offered him a world of books in many languages, and he mined this resource for a lifetime. Alongside his university duties, Burton entered the Church of England. He was appointed vicar of St Thomas' Church in Oxford around 1616, and later, in 1630, he was presented to the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire. He balanced these clerical responsibilities with residence at Christ Church, typical of early seventeenth-century scholarly clergy.

Family and Circles
Burton was not isolated in his pursuits. His elder brother William Burton, an antiquary and historian of Leicestershire, shared his devotion to books and historical inquiry, and the brothers' correspondence and interests reinforced each other's work. Within Christ Church, Burton overlapped with figures who helped shape the literary and ecclesiastical life of the time. Richard Corbet, the witty poet who served as Dean of Christ Church and later became a bishop, was among the notable churchmen in Burton's orbit; their college community fostered collegial exchange and an appreciation for learned humor. These networks rooted Burton in a milieu that prized both scholarship and style.

Writing as Democritus Junior
Burton is best known as the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, published first in 1621 under the playful persona "Democritus Junior". The choice of pseudonym invoked the ancient "laughing philosopher" and signaled Burton's method: to observe, to anatomize, and to comment with a blend of gravity and mirth. By adopting a mask, he could range widely across medical, philosophical, and literary domains, combining learned citation with penetrating social observation. He revised the book repeatedly across subsequent editions in the 1620s and 1630s, each time expanding and refining its structure and references.

The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy is an exhaustive, three-part inquiry into melancholy as a condition of body and mind. Burton gathers classical authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle, medieval scholastics, Renaissance humanists like Erasmus, and contemporary medical writers, knitting them together with his own commentary. He catalogs causes from humoral imbalance and diet to social pressures, religious scruples, and the dislocations of modern life. He treats symptoms in learned detail and, crucially, lays out remedies: temperate diet, exercise, sleep, study in moderation, friendship, music, and, when needed, physic. He writes in English rather than Latin, opening learned discourse to a broader readership while retaining the Latin tags and citations that testify to his reading. The book is famous for its digressions, its encyclopedic range, and its blend of satire and sympathy. Burton confesses that he writes, in part, to treat his own tendency toward melancholy; the act of compilation becomes a therapy for author and reader alike.

Other Works and Interests
Before the Anatomy, Burton wrote Philosophaster, a Latin comedy satirizing imposture and false learning. Performed at Christ Church, it reveals his ear for academic life and his dislike of charlatanry. Though less celebrated than the Anatomy, it demonstrates the same instinct to examine institutions with wit and moral purpose. Burton's interests included astronomy and astrology as they were then understood, history, geography, and the emerging literature of travel and exploration. He read widely across confessional and national boundaries, modelling the cosmopolitan erudition that early modern Oxford prized.

Habits of Mind and Method
Burton's method was cumulative: he excerpted, organized, and reorganized, building a mosaic of authorities and examples. He tested received opinions against experience, attending to how environment, custom, and temperament shape the mind. He wrote with a moralist's concern for human flourishing but resisted rigid systems. Instead, he layered instances and counterinstances, leaving readers with a taxonomy of causes and cures rather than a single doctrine. Humor, quotation, and lists serve him not as ornaments but as tools for analysis. The dense notes and later corrections in successive editions show him as tireless reviser, always adding, pruning, and adjusting.

Standing in Church and University
As a clergyman, Burton preached and discharged pastoral duties, and as an Oxford man he contributed to the continuity of collegiate life through years that spanned the later Elizabethan, Jacobean, and early Caroline reigns. He lived through changing intellectual currents as new science, skeptical inquiry, and confessional debates pressed upon the old frameworks. While he did not court controversy, his Anatomy observes how religious extremity and fear can feed despondency, urging moderation as a spiritual and medical counsel. In this respect he stood with learned churchmen around him, including colleagues at Christ Church, in valuing balanced piety and humane letters.

Final Years and Death
Burton remained chiefly at Oxford in his final years, continuing to revise his major work and to tend to his clerical obligations. He died in 1640 and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. His memorial famously identifies him with his chosen persona, declaring that Melancholy gave him both life and death. The epitaph, at once solemn and gently ironic, suits an author who transformed a personal and cultural affliction into a masterpiece of inquiry and consolation.

Legacy
The Anatomy of Melancholy secured Burton a lasting place in English letters. Later readers found in him a companionable guide to the workings of the mind and the textures of learning. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers mined his pages for insight and quotation, and modern scholars value the book as a window onto early modern medicine, psychology, and scholarship. Yet his legacy also endures in a more intimate way: in the image of a patient, witty, humane observer, nurtured by Oxford libraries and collegial ties, including the companionship of his brother William Burton and the lively society of Christ Church under deans like Richard Corbet. In that setting, Burton fashioned a work that is both of its time and perennially new, a testament to the restorative powers of study, conversation, and measured cheerfulness in the face of melancholy.

Our collection contains 17 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Love - Knowledge - Success.