Thomas Browne > Quotes

“We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.”
― Sir Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“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.”
― Thomas Browne

“Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.”
― Thomas Browne

“By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.”
― Thomas Browne

“I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure, of knowledge; 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.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

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

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Urne Burial

“I could never divide my selfe from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with mee in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent my selfe...”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“If there be any among those common objects of hatred which I can safely say I doe contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, vertue and religion, the multitude, that numerous piece of monstrosity, which taken asunder seeme men, and the reasonable creatures of God; but confused together, make but one great beast, & a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra; it is no breach of Charity to call these fooles; it is the stile all holy Writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonicall Scripture, and a point of our faith to beleeve so.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici / Urne-Buriall

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many million faces, there should be none alike.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici; And Other Writings

“Darknesse and light divide the course of time, and oblivion snares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest stroaks of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a mercifull provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting rememberances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.”
― Thomas Browne, Urne Burial

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“Natura nihil agit frustra, [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputed Axiome in Philosophy.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici - Enhanced Version

“This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity' something quite different, relating to the planet's life-span, not individual life-span.”
― Thomas Browne, Christian Morals

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

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“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.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

“It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment: but the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments.”
― Thomas Browne, Urne Burial

“There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.”
― Thomas Browne

“All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.”
― Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus

“Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his owne executioner.”
― Thomas Browne

“That there must be heresies is true, not onely in our Church, but also in any other; even in Doctrines hereticall there will be super-heresies, and Arians not onely divided from their Church, but also among themselves: for heads that are disposed unto Schisme...are naturally indisposed for a community, nor will ever be confined unto the order or oeconomy of one body; and therefore when they separate from others they knit but loosely among themselves; nor contented with a general breach or dichotomie with their Church, do subdivide and mince themselves almost into Atomes.”
― Thomas Browne, Religio Medici