Thomas Browne Quotes

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

... indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossuses and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematieks; and the civility of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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

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.

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

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?

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.

Oblivion is not to be hired.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.

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.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Lord deliver me from myself.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.

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.