Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

— Thomas Browne

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.

— Thomas Browne

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

— Thomas Browne

There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

— Thomas Browne

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.

— Thomas Browne

Sleep is a death; oh, make me tryOn my grave as now my bed.

— Thomas Browne

Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

I look upon you as a gem of the old rock.

— Thomas Browne

In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.

— Thomas Browne

A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.

— Thomas Browne

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

— Thomas Browne

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.

— 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

That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

To keep our eyes open longer were but to set our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

— Thomas Browne

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

— Thomas Browne

Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

— Thomas Browne

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

— Thomas Browne

When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.

— Thomas Browne

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

Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.

— Thomas Browne

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.

— Thomas Browne

A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender.

— Thomas Browne

Rich with the spoils of Nature.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible.

— Thomas Browne

We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

— Thomas Browne

Art is the perfection of nature.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.

— Thomas Browne

Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.

— Thomas Browne

This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.

— Thomas Browne

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us.

— Thomas Browne

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.

— Thomas Browne

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.

— Thomas Browne

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

— Thomas Browne

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

— Thomas Browne