Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Browne

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British scientist Thomas Browne.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry and are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffused with melancholia, Browne's writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy. — © Thomas Browne
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
Death is the cure for all diseases.
Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason. — © Thomas Browne
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.
We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
It is we that are blind, not fortune.
Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.
We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
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.
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.
Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.
(Death is) A leap into the dark.
Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.
There is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though indeed it hath no history of what it was before us, and cannot tell how it entered into us.
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.
Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.
There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
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.
Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.
Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.
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.
Where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.
The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.
Be deaf unto the suggestions of tale-bearers, calumniators, pick-thank or malevolent detractors, who, while quiet men sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society. These are the tongues that set the world on fire--cankerers of reputation, and, like that of Jonah's gourd, wither a good name in a single night.
Light is the shadow of God. — © Thomas Browne
Light is the shadow of God.
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.
There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.
Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.
Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.
We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.
I have tried if I could reach that great resolution . . . to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.
I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God. — © Thomas Browne
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.
The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.
Think before you act; think twice before you speak.
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.
How shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves?
For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.
I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.
Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.
There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two.
All the wonders you seek are within yourself.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.
There is another man within me that's angry with me.
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