Richard Francis Burton Quotes

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.

I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate ... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information.

All so-called revealed religions consist mainly of three portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified, and a moral code more or less pure.

One death to a man is a serious thing: a dozen neutralize one another.

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.

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.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind.

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, themagic Laby'rinth's single clue ...

Do what thy manhood bids thee do.

Man remembers and combines but does not create.

And still the Weaver plies his loom,
whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design,
so dark we doubt it owns a plan

The wise do not argue therefrom, that the desires of the woman, as long as she is young and strong, are not as real and urgent of those of the man.

Ah! gay the day with shine of sun,
and bright the breeze, and blithe the
throng
Met on the River-bank to play,
when I was young, when I was young

Wherever we halted we were surrounded by wandering troops of Bedouins.

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.

If you can't laugh together in bed, the chances are you are incompatible, anyway. I'd rather hear a girl laugh well than try to turn me on with long, silent, soulful, secret looks. If you can laugh with a woman, everything else falls into place.

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.

For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day.

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?

The penis smooth and round was made with anus best to match it, * Had it been made for cunnus' sake it had been formed like hatchet!

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.

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.

The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself ... I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history ... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple
minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single
minded and merciless ferocity."