Thomas Browne
Title: Sir Thomas Browne
Birthdate: October 19, 1605
Birthplace: London, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: October 19, 1682
Occupation: Author and Physician
Profile: Regarded as a polymath. Best known for
Religio Medici. Knighted in 1671.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Browne
Number of Quotes: 146
A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the
next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and are but embryon philosophers.
Urn Burial
A diamond, which is the hardest of stones, not yielding unto steel, emery or any other thing, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest.
On Dreams
A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.
Religio Medici
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
Religio Medici
A sick man's sacrifice is but a lame oblation.
Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Religio Medici
All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again;
according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
The Garden of Cyrus
And surely, he that hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age, is not like to envy those
that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine what face this world will carry.
Letter to a Friend
Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself:
for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.
Religio Medici
Art is the perfection of nature.
Religio Medici
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
Religio Medici
Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.
Religio Medici
Be deaf unto the suggestions of tale-bearers, calumniators, pick-thank or malevolent detractors, who, while quiet
men sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society.
Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.
Christian Morals
Be thou what thou singly art and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and live but one man.
Religio Medici
Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy follies.
Christian Morals
But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at
home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
Religio Medici
But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities
and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.
Urn Burial
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
Urn Burial
But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.
The Garden of Cyrus
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
Religio Medici
Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies! Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue.
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings.
Urn Burial
Death is the cure for all diseases.
Religio Medici
Every man acts truly so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties in himself.
Every man's own reason is his best oedipus.
Religio Medici
Festination may prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.
Religio Medici
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
Religio Medici
Futurity still shortens, and time present sucks in time to come.
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground,
is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.
Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.
On Dreams
Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras.
On Dreams
Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts but tenderly touch.
He honours God that
imitates Him.
He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.
He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.
Christian Morals
He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.
How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.
Religio Medici
I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can
compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.
Religio Medici
I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that
in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, wife, and children stand afraid and start at us.
Religio Medici
I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity
to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.
I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.
Religio Medici
I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others.
Religio Medici
I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect
all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
Religio Medici
I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate
the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.
Religio Medici
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his
judgment for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.
Religio Medici
I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
Religio Medici
I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others, those national repugnances do not touch me.
Religio Medici
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers.
Religio Medici
I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.
Religio Medici
I look upon you as a gem of the old rock.
Urn Burial
I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.
Religio Medici
I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge; I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning.
Religio Medici
I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate Him
and His attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty
ones, His wisdom and eternity.
Religio Medici
I should not so easily despair of any man, when I consider the example of Paul.
Religio Medici
I would not die, but care not to be dead.
Religio Medici
In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.
Urn Burial
It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but when life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live.
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.
Religio Medici
It is the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of those past, that charity grows cold.
Religio Medici
It is we that are blind, not fortune.
Religio Medici
Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Caesar within thyself.
Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.
Religio Medici
Let any stranger find me so pleasant a county, such good way, large heath, three such places as
Norwich, Yar. and Lin. in any county of England, and I'll be once again a vagabond to visit them.
Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Hydriotaphia
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.
The Garden of Cyrus
Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
Hydriotaphia
Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.
Religio Medici
Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I
that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the
thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.
Religio Medici
Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels.
Nature is the art of God.
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.
Religio Medici
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves;
who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own death, which no man fears by experience.
Letter to a Friend
Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.
Religio Medici
Of all men, a philosopher should be no swearer; for an oath, which is the end of
controversies in law, cannot determine any here, where reason only must induce.
Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.
Religio Medici
Pursue virtue virtuously.
Letter to a Friend
Rest not in an ovation, but in a triumph over thy passions.
Rich with the spoils of nature.
Religio Medici
Rich with the spoils of time.
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
Religio Medici
Since not only judgments have their awards, but mercies their commissions, snatch
not at every favour, nor think thyself passed by if they fall upon thy neighbour.
Sleep is a death; oh, make me try by sleeping what it is to die, and as gently lay my head on my grave as now my bed.
Religio Medici
Some will allow no Disease to be new, others think that many old ones are ceased; and that such which are esteemed new, will have but their time.
That which the sun doth not now see will be visible when the sun is out, and the stars are fallen from heaven.
The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity.
Christian Morals
The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.
Religio Medici
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
Urn Burial
The noblest digladiation is in the theatre of ourselves.
Christian Morals
The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible.
Religio Medici
The treasures of time lie high, in urnes, coynes, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables.
The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.
The voice of prophecies is like that of whispering-places; they who are near hear nothing, those at the first extremity will know all.
The world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.
Religio Medici
The world, which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make out.
There are no grotesques in nature.
There is a rabble amongst the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves in the same wheel with the others.
There is no darkness unto the conscience, which can see without light.
There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.
There is no road or ready way to virtue.
Religio Medici
There is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though indeed
it hath no history of what it was before us, and cannot tell how it entered into us.
There is surely a piece of fivinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Religio Medici
They do most by books who could do much without them; and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself is the substantial man.
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.
Religio Medici
Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.
Think not thy own shadow longer than that of others.
This I think charity — to love God for
himself, and our neighbour for God.
This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, death.
Religio Medici
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
Religio Medici
Thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only
like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.
Religio Medici
Time antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.
Urn Burial
Times before you, when even living men were antiquities,—when the living might exceed the
dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater number.
Urn Burial
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.
Urn Burial
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
Religio Medici
To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope,
without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief.
To keep our eyes open longer were but to set our antipodes.
The Garden of Cyrus
To make an end of all things on earth, and our planetical system of the world,
he (God) need but put out the sun.
Letter to a Friend
To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own
tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.
Christian Morals
Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure.
True fame is ever likened to our shade, He sooneth misseth her, that most (haste) hath made to overtake her; whoso takes his wing,
regardless of her, she'll be following; her true proprietie she thus discovers, loves her contemners, and contemns her lovers.
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
Religio Medici
We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous
piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.
Religio Medici
We censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in
ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.
We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgments will unteach tomorrow.
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.
Religio Medici
We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of
every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us.
Religio Medici
Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
Urn Burial
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
Urn Burial
When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids.
When nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on; and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high.
When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Book V, chapter 22
Where we desire to be informed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to
confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own.
Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more
remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?
Urn Burial
Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
Who would expect a quick flame from hydropical heraclitus?
Hydriotaphia
With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.
Urn Burial
Write thy wrongs in ashes.
You can cure vices by physic when they remain incurable by divinity.
Religio Medici
Last on Earth
