Thomas Browne quotes:

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

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

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

Death is the cure for all diseases.

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

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.

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

Be thou what thou singly art and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and live but one man.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.

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

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

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

The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.

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.

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.

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

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

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

Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it.

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

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

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.

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.

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

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.

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.

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.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

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.

If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

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.

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

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 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.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

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.

Rich with the spoils of nature.

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.

Think before you act; think twice before you speak.

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

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

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.

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

(Death is) A leap into the dark.

. . . indeed what reason may not go to Schoole to the wisdome of Bees, Ants, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and Camels; these I confesse, are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdome of their Maker.

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

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.

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

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

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

All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

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.

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

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.

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

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

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

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

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

Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.

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

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

Every Country hath its Machiavel.

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

Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.

For God is like a skilfull Geometrician.

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

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

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

Gardens were before gardeners, and but some hours after the earth.

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

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.

Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while families last not three oaks.

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

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

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.

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

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

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

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

How shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves?

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.

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

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.

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 the actions of their inward forms.

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.

I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.

I had rather stand the shock of a basilisk than the fury of a merciless pen.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

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

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

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

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

Light is but the shadow of God.

Light is the shadow of God.

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.

Lord deliver me from myself.

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

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

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

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line ure hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the Art of God.

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.

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

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.