Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Aubrey (English Antiquarian, Writer)

John Aubrey (1626–97) was an English antiquary, biographer, and folklorist. He is best known for Brief Lives, a collection of vivid, intimate, and sometimes acid sketches of his contemporaries.

Born in Easton Piercy, Wiltshire, Wiltshire, Aubrey was educated at Malmesbury, Blandford, and Trinity College, Oxford. He studied law at the Middle Temple but was never called to the Bar. In 1648, he discovered the prehistoric stones and remains of Avebury in southwest England and carried out archeological research elsewhere. He was nominated as one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society (1662.)

In 1652, Aubrey succeeded to several estates, but he was forced through lawsuits to part with the last of them in 1670, and part with his books in 1677. His last years were passed in “danger of arrests” for avoiding creditors under the protection of architect Christopher Wren, philosopher Thomas Hobbes, politician Elias Ashmole, and others.

Aubrey’s Miscellanies (1696,) containing apparitions, stories, and folklore, were printed in his lifetime. He left a mass of material. His biographical and anecdotal material on celebrities of his time like Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Francis Bacon, collected for the historian and antiquarian Anthony à Wood (1632–95,) was published in letters by Eminent Persons (1813,) better known as Brief Lives (2 vol., 1898; edited by Andrew Clark.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by John Aubrey

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
John Aubrey
Topics: Books, Reading

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *