Thomas Browne Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

Sleep is a death, O make me try By sleeping, what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed.

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.

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

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.

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

Oblivion is not to be hired.

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

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

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.

The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead.

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

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 intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.

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

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.

To be content with death may be better than to desire it.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.

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.

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

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

The man without a navel still lives in me.

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

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