Thomas Browne Quotes

They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.

Think not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity.

Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.

There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself.

Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

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.

The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express their natures.

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse.

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.

Do the devils lie? No; for then even hell could not subsist.

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty; there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein, notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty.

The world, which took six days to make, is likely to take us six thousand years to make out.

(Death is) A leap into the dark.

There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.

The man without a navel still lives in me.

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

Nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it.

Let any stranger find mee 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 bee once again a vagabond to visit them.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.

Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.

That miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny; but I have no confidence on those which are fathered on the dead.

Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.

There is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.

Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.

Where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.

I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others.

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.

There is in those workes of nature, which seeme to puzle reason, something Divine, and that hath more in it then the eye of a common spectator doth discover.

I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment; where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.

We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.

Art is the perfection of nature, ... nature is the art of God.

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.

Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.

What then is the wisdom of the times called old? Is it the wisdom of gray hairs? No. It is the wisdom of the cradle.

Were every one employed in points concordant to their natures, professions, and arts, commonwealths would rise up of themselves.

No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.

The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

God hath varied the inclinations of men according to the variety of actions to be performed.

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.

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.

Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels.

It is we that are blind, not Fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.

There is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheares; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the care, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaime against all Church musicke... Even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first Composer; there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers. It is an Hieroglyphicall and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and Creatures of God, such a melody to the eare, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In briefe it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in the eares of God.

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.

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

Every Country hath its Machiavel.

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof, 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures.

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.

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.

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.

I can hardly thinke there was any scared into Heaven; they go the surest way to Heaven who would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries, that crouch unto Him in feare of Hell, though they terme themselves servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty.

We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all disease.

Tis hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for example.

Oblivion is not to be hired.

Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.

I have tried if I could reach that great resolution ... to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.

Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.

For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.

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.

With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.

The service of love is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors ...

Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.

The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.

Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself (Christian morals).

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.

Suicide is not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. 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; and herein religion hath taught us a noble example, for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scarvola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job.

He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.

He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying

Light is but the shadow of God.

To be content with death may be better than to desire it.

That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.

Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.

Women do most delight in revenge.

Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction.

In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers;

Since women do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive.