John Aubrey Quotations

When he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. (About Shakespeare)

My dad was a pretty poor guy, he didn't have a whole lot of money. He always wanted something for my brother and myself, some kind of business. He'd asked the owners of this course to call him if it ever came up for sale, and one day, they called. I had a scholarship offer to Ohio State and my dad said, 'Son, what do you want to do, cut grass or go to school?' I said, what do you want me to do, Dad? He said, 'Well, I can't afford any help.' I said, 'No problem, Dad, I'll help you cut grass.' Looking back, I think I made the right decision.

I don't know that I'd really want to do this full time, ... I enjoy my family and cutting the grass at home. There's more in life than golf. I enjoy the game but I don't know if I could do it every day. If I go practice, I practice for an hour. The guys out here practice for six hours. I couldn't do that. I've never had the length, I'm not that strong of a guy. I hit it 250, 260, I hit it very straight and I'm not a bad putter. You have to do this all the time to get the nerves. I don't know if I have the nerves for the next three days.

I couldn't see it go in because of the mound in front of the green, ... I knew it was going to be close.

He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

To make a hole-in-one in a major, that was great, ... It's an honor for me to play in a major with all these great players and be under par... and then make a hole-in-one to boot. That might put me in the history books.

Upon the sixth of April, Alexander the Great was born. Upon the same day he conquered Darius, won a great victory at sea, and died the same day.

I shall take particular notice here of the third of November, both because 'tis my own birth day, and also for that I have observed some remarkable accidents to have happened thereupon.

He (Thomas Hobbes) walked much and contemplated, and he had in the head of his staff a pen and ink-horn, carried always a notebook in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise he might perhaps ha

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Box about: 'twill come to my father anon.

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.

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

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.

I have been in danger of being drowned twice.

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.

Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put 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 the gentleman that sat next to him and said, "Box about: twill come to my father anon."

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.

Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbors, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style and make a speech. Ben Jonson and he did gather humors of men daily wherever they came.

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.