Thomas Browne Quotes

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

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

Light is the shadow of God.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

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.

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 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.

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.

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

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

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.

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.

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

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

Rich with the spoils of nature.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Think before you act; think twice before you speak.

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.

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.

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

There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.

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

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

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

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.

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

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

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

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

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

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

Women do most delight in revenge.

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

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