John Aubrey Quotes

John Aubrey presents quirky, old-world musings on history, writing and war, appealing to fans of offbeat scholarly humor.

31 quotes

1. 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.

2. There is to some men a great Lechery in Lying, and imposing on the understandings of beleeving people.

3. He left an estate of eleaven thousand pounds per annum. Sir John Danvers, who knew him, told me that he had heard one say to him, reflecting on his great scraping of wealth, that his sonnes would spend his Estate faster than he gott it; he replyed, They cannot take more delight in the spending of it than I did in the getting of it.

4. How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them downe.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Dr. Kettle was wont to say that Seneca writes as a Boare does pisse, scilicet by jirkes.

8. His complexion exceeding faire - he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College.

9. He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard - a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt.

10. Sciatica: he cured it, by boyling his buttock.

11. I remember about 1660 there was a great difference between him and Sir Hierome Sanchy, one of Oliver's knights:The Knight had been a Soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. Sir William is extremely short sighted, and being the challengee it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates, for the place, a darke Cellar, and the weapon to be a great Carpenter's Axe. This turned the knight's challenge into Ridicule, and so it came to nought.

12. He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations.

13. His manner of Studie was thus:About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes off one's fancy, which will not presently be regained: and 'tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim [drop by drop]: and the like for perspiration, check it, and 'tis spoyled.

14. Sir Walt, being strangely supprized and putt out of his countenance at so great a Table, gives his son a damned blow over the face; his son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face of the Gentleman that sate next to him, and sayed, Box about, 'twill come to my Father anon. 'Tis now a common used Proverb.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition: Being demanded, whether a good Spirit, or a bad? returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious Perfume and most melodious Twang. Mr. W. Lilly believes it was a Farie.

18. This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

19. His insatiable passion for singular odds and ends had a meaning in it; he was groping towards a scientific ordering of phenomena; but the twilight of his age was too confusing, and he could rarely distinguish between a fact and a fantasy.

20. How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellowes as I put them down.

21. He [William Harvey] bid me to goe to the Fountain-head, and read Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques shitt-breeches.

22. I have been in danger of being drowned twice.

23. About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry.

24. Box about: 'twill come to my father anon.

25. He [William Harvey] did not care for chymistrey, and was wont to speake against them with an undervalue.

26. The silver Thames takes some part of this county in its journey to Oxford.

27. 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.

28. I have heard him [William Harvey] say, that after his Booke of the Circulation of the Blood came-out, that he fell mightily in his Practize, and that 'twas beleeved by the vulgar that he was crack-brained.

29. Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.

30. If Solomon counts the day of one's death better than the day of one's birth, there can be no objection why that also may not be reckoned amongst one's remarkable and happy days.

31. “As he lay expiring in the agony of death, the standers-by could hear him say softly 'I have seen the glories of the world.”