Gilbert Burnet
Gilbert Burnet
Gilbert Burnetwas a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Burnet was highly respected as a cleric, a preacher, and an academic, as well as a writer and historian. He was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III confided...
error great latin learning tedious waste
. . . it a great error to waste young gentlemen's years so long in learning Latin by so tedious a grammar.
amusement return overcoming
...learning chiefly in mathematical sciences can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations.
brother kings character
The Duke of Buckingham gave me once a short but severe character of the two brothers. It was the more severe, because it was true: the King (he said) could see things if he would, and the Duke would see things if he could.
strong kings powerful
One of the strangest catastrophes that is in any history. A great king, with strong armies and mighty fleets, a great treasure and powerful allies, fell all at once, and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was... irrecoverably broken at a touch.
running men thinking
There is no lasting pleasure but contemplation; all others grow flat and insipid upon frequent use; and when a man hath run through a set of vanities, in the declension of his age, he knows not what to do with himself, if he cannot think; he saunters about from one dull business to another, to wear out time; and hath no reason to value Life but because he is afraid of death.