1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton citations
Page 3

Richard Francis Burton, né le 19 mars 1821 à Torquay et mort le 20 octobre 1890 à Trieste, est un érudit et polymathe britannique. Il est tour à tour officier militaire, escrimeur, explorateur, écrivain et poète, traducteur, linguiste, orientaliste, maître soufi, ethnologue, diplomate et expérimentateur passionné de la plupart des perversions humaines.

Il mène une vie romanesque et voyage inlassablement sur tous les continents. Il parle 29 langues et 11 dialectes et, maîtrisant l'arabe, il est l'un des premiers Occidentaux à atteindre la Mecque, déguisé en pèlerin. Il en rapporte notamment des croquis et des mesures de la Kaaba.

Au cours de sa carrière militaire et diplomatique, il sert d'abord en Inde en qualité de capitaine de l'armée de la Compagnie anglaise des Indes orientales, puis brièvement durant la Guerre de Crimée. Il dirige ensuite l'expédition de la Société Royale de Géographie qui devait aboutir à la découverte du lac Tanganyika en 1858. Il devient plus tard consul de Grande-Bretagne à Fernando Po de 1861 à 1864, à Santos de 1865 à 1869, à Damas de 1869 à 1871 et enfin à Trieste de 1871 jusqu'à sa mort en 1890.

En plus de ses fonctions officielles, il est l'auteur de quantité de livres et articles consacrés aux sujets les plus divers : voyages, escrime et ethnographie. On lui doit notamment la première traduction non expurgée des Mille et Une Nuits et du Kâmasûtra.

Membre de la Royal Geographical Society, cofondateur de l'Anthropological Society of London, il est fait chevalier de l'Ordre de Saint-Michel et Saint-George en 1886. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. mars 1821 – 20. octobre 1890
Richard Francis Burton photo
Richard Francis Burton: 78   citations 0   J'aime

Richard Francis Burton: Citations en anglais

“I have struggled for forty-seven years, distinguishing myself honourably in every way that I possibly could. I never had a compliment, nor a "thank you," nor a single farthing. I translate a doubtful book in my old age, and I immediately make sixteen thousand guineas. Now that I know the tastes of England, we need never be without money.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

As quoted in The Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton, Vol. II (1893), by Lady Isabel Burton, p. 442

“"Faith mountains move" I hear: I see the practice of the world unheed
The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that serves our vanity to feed. "Faith stands unmoved"; and why? Because man's silly fancies still remain,
And will remain till wiser man the day-dreams of his youth disdain.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“"Th' immortal mind of mortal man!" we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“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?”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) Terminal Essay: Social Conditions, fn. 13.

“Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,
When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

Richard Eugene Burton, Memorial Day, And Other Poems (1897), 'So Much to Learn', p. 8
Misattributed

“Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born;
"Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn."
Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“"Reason and Instinct!" How we love to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide! For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary,
where live his little span of life secure?
and 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms
that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

Translation of The Lusiads, Canto I, st. 106, p. 40

“A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

17th century proverb
Misattributed

“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“Reason and Instinct!”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

How we love to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide! <p> For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born;
"Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn.”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

“Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?”

Help us translate this quote
Richard Francis Burton

and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'.
Burton to Lord Houghton as quoted in The Devil Drives: A life of Sir Richard Burton (1984) by Fawn Brodie.

Auteurs similaires

Emily Brontë photo
Emily Brontë 18
écrivaine britannique
Thomas Carlyle photo
Thomas Carlyle 1
Romancier, historien et essayiste écossais
Lewis Carroll photo
Lewis Carroll 4
romancier, essayiste, photographe et mathématicien britanni…
Jules Renard photo
Jules Renard 24
écrivain français
Fedor Dostoïevski photo
Fedor Dostoïevski 13
écrivain russe
John Ruskin photo
John Ruskin 3
auteur, poète, artiste et critique d’art britannique
Honoré de Balzac photo
Honoré de Balzac 193
romancier, critique littéraire, essayiste, journaliste et é…
Charles Spurgeon photo
Alexandre Dumas photo
Alexandre Dumas 133
écrivain et dramaturge français, père de l'écrivain et dram…
Victor Hugo photo
Victor Hugo 322
écrivain français