1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. John Aubrey

John Aubrey Quotes

John Aubrey was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the Brief Lives, his collection of short biographical pieces. He was a pioneer archaeologist, who recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, and who is particularly noted as the discoverer of the Avebury henge monument. The Aubrey holes at Stonehenge are named after him, although there is considerable doubt as to whether the holes that he observed are those that currently bear the name. He was also a pioneer folklorist, collecting together a miscellany of material on customs, traditions and beliefs under the title "Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme". He set out to compile county histories of both Wiltshire and Surrey, although both projects remained unfinished. His "Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum" was the first attempt to compile a full-length study of English place-names. He had wider interests in applied mathematics and astronomy, and was friendly with many of the greatest scientists of the day.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks largely to the popularity of Brief Lives, Aubrey was regarded as little more than an entertaining but quirky, eccentric and credulous gossip. Only in the 1970s did the full breadth and innovation of his scholarship begin to be more widely appreciated. He published little in his lifetime, and many of his most important manuscripts remain unpublished, or published only in partial form. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. March 1626 – 7. June 1697
John Aubrey photo

Works

Brief Lives
Brief Lives
John Aubrey
John Aubrey: 20   quotes 0   likes

Famous John Aubrey Quotes

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

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Venetia Digby"
Brief Lives

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Nicholas Towes"
Brief Lives

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Thomas Hobbes"
Brief Lives

“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.”

John Aubrey

Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects (London: J. R. Smith, 1857) p. 128. (1696)

“His complexion exceeding faire – he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"John Milton"
Brief Lives

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Prynne"
Brief Lives

John Aubrey Quotes

“Sciatica: he cured it, by boyling his buttock.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Sir Jonas Moore"
Brief Lives

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

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Ralph Kettell"
Brief Lives

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

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Thomas Allen"
Brief Lives

Men , People , Lying , Understanding

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Shakespeare"
Brief Lives

Way , Personality

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Sir Edward Coke"
Brief Lives

Wealth

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"David Jenkins"
Brief Lives

“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.”

John Aubrey

Lytton Strachey Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931) p. 24.
Criticism

Age , Passion

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Shakespeare"
Brief Lives

Exercises , Boy

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

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Prynne"
Brief Lives

Learning , Reading

“He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased.”

John Aubrey

Anthony Wood (1667), Life (from 1632 to 1672, written by himself; continued till 1695 a 1695, 1772, 1848, O.H.S. 1891–1900 http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeandtimesant00clargoog#page/n150/mode/2up); as quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, Draft Revision June 2009, maggoty, adj. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00299405
Criticism

Personality

“He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard – a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"John Milton"
Brief Lives

“Sir Walter, 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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

'Tis now a common used Proverb.
"Sir Walter Raleigh"
Brief Lives

Box

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford"
Brief Lives

Travel , Home

“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.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Sir William Petty"
Brief Lives

Fight

Similar authors

Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer
Daniel Defoe photo
Daniel Defoe 43
English trader, writer and journalist
Thomas Fuller photo
Thomas Fuller 35
English churchman and historian
Alexander Pope photo
Alexander Pope 158
eighteenth century English poet
John Milton photo
John Milton 190
English epic poet
Henry Fielding photo
Henry Fielding 70
English novelist and dramatist
William Shakespeare photo
William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet
John Donne photo
John Donne 115
English poet
Thomas Paine photo
Thomas Paine 262
English and American political activist
Thomas Cranmer photo
Thomas Cranmer 2
leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterb…