Richard Francis Burton quotes

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. (Richard Francis Burton)
Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
I was surrounded at the time by about a dozen of the enemy, whose clubs rattled upon me without mercy, and the strokes of my sabre were rendered uncertain by the energetic pushes of an attendant who thus hoped to save me. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race: by falling into a daily fit of passion, I proved to the governor and his son, who were profuse in their attentions, that I was in earnest. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Travellers like poets are mostly an angry race. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun? (Richard Francis Burton)
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
"Tush!" quoth the Zahid, "well we ken the teaching of the school abhorr'd "That maketh man automaton, mind a secretion, soul a word." "Of molecules and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; "Of jelly-speck development and apes that grew to man's estate." Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law; - Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe? View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I," When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
"'Tis blessed to believe"; you say: The saying may be true enow And it can add to Life a light: - only remains to show us how. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Starting in a hollowed log of wood - some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
"Th' immortal mind of mortal man!" we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
One death to a man is a serious thing: a dozen neutralize one another. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Wherever we halted we were surrounded by wandering troops of Bedouins. (Richard Francis Burton)
That creatures endowed with the mere possibility of liberty should not always choose the Good appears natural. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Of the gladest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Presently our fire being exhausted, and the enemy pressing on with spear and javelin, the position became untenable; the tent was nearly battered down by clubs, and had we been entangled in its folds, we should have been killed without the power of resistance. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began. View quote
Richard Francis Burton