Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Browne

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British scientist Thomas Browne.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

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.

British - Scientist | October 19, 1605 - October 19, 1682

Source: Wikipedia

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

Thomas Browne

Death is the cure for all diseases.

Thomas Browne

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Thomas Browne

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.

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

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

Thomas Browne

(Death is) A leap into the dark.

Thomas Browne

Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.

Thomas Browne

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

Thomas Browne

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.

Thomas Browne

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

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

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

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, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

Light is the shadow of God.

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.

Thomas Browne

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

Thomas Browne

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.

Thomas Browne

I have tried if I could reach that great resolution . . . to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.

Thomas Browne

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

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

The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.

Thomas Browne

Think before you act; think twice before you speak.

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

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

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

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.

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

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.

Thomas Browne

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.

Thomas Browne

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

Thomas Browne

There is another man within me that's angry with me.

Thomas Browne