Robert Burton

For Burton's life is told in two words: he read. His empire is a room.

"No torment is so bad as love, " so he said.

Robert Burton (1577-1640) was an English scholar and vicar at Oxford University, beest known for writing The Anatomy of Melancholy.

He wrote the book largely to write himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression.  From the preface of the book: "I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business."

A spectator and student of life. Burton, another such a man who understood the folly of life, and love it before all else. His language, for all that it is has to squeeze itself in between the words of philosophy and poetry.