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John Aubrey Quotes
1626–1697 England
John Aubrey (March 12 1626 – June 7 1697) was an English biographer, natural philosopher, antiquary and folklorist. He is best known for his gossipy and uncritical Brief Lives, a collection of thumbnail biographical sketches.
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The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.
How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellows as I am put them down.
There is to some men a great Lechery in Lying, and imposing on the understandings of beleeving people.
He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard – a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt.
He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations.
His complexion exceeding faire – he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College.
Dr. Kettle was wont to say that Seneca writes as a Boare does pisse, scilicet by jirkes.
The parliament intended to have hanged him, and he expected no less, but resolved to be hanged with the Bible under one arm and Magna Carta under the other.
Sciatica: he cured it, by boyling his buttock.
His father was a Butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's Trade, but when he kill'd a Calfe he would doe it in high style, and make a Speech.
His Comoedies will remaine witt as long as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles mores hominum [the ways of mankind]. Now our present writers reflect so much on particular persons and coxcombeities that twenty yeares hence they will not be understood.
He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more then his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have knowne no more than other men.
Arise Evans had a fungous nose, and said, it was revealed to him, that the King's hand would cure him, and at the first coming of King Charles II into St. James's Park, he kissed the King's hand, and rubbed his nose with it; which disturbed the King, but cured him.
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