Thomas Browne Quotations

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

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

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

Death hath a thousand doors to let out life. I shall find one.

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

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

Charity 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.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, and fill his snuffbox, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies! Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue; The weeping messenger of grace from heaven.

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.

By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

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

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

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

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

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

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

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.

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

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

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, For unto him a tomb's the Universe.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end.

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.

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.

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.

For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches.

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.

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

Should your riches increase, let your mind keep pace with them.

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

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.

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, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.

A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest.

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

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

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.

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

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.

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.

To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.

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.

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

(Death is) A leap into the dark.

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

Times before you, when even the 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.

If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.

Lord deliver me from myself.

Festination may prove Precipitation; Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.

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.

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

As sins proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that wert before it.

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

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.

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.

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.

Think before you act; think twice before you speak.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. These are the tongues that set the world on fire--cankerers of reputation, and, like that of Jonah's gourd, wither a good name in a single night.

With what shift and pains we come into the World we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it.

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

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

Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.

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

To me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness.

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.

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

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.

Light is but the shadow of God.

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

Oblivion is not to be hired.