Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Browne - Page 2

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself (Christian morals).

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.

Festination may prove Precipitation; Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.

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

I can hardly thinke there was any scared into Heaven; they go the surest way to Heaven who would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries, that crouch unto Him in feare of Hell, though they terme themselves servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty.

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

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.

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.

Be Charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and loose not the glory of the Mite.

To me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness.

Every Country hath its Machiavel.

Light is but the shadow of God.

For God is like a skilfull Geometrician.

Lord deliver me from myself.

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.

Be thou what thou singly art and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and live but one man.

They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.

The service of love is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

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.

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

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

Suicide is not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but when life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live; and herein religion hath taught us a noble example, for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scarvola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job.

For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches.

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

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.

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

For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

I had rather stand the shock of a basilisk than the fury of a merciless pen.

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

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.

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.

To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief.

To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe.

There are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces.

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

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?

The world, which took six days to make, is likely to take us six thousand years to make out.

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.

Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

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

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

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 music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.

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.

Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.

Therefore for Spirits, I am so far from denying their existence that I could easily believe, that not only whole Countries, but particular persons, have their Tutelary and Guardian Angels.

Death hath a thousand doors to let out life. I shall find one.

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

The discourses of the table among true loving friends are held in strict silence.

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.

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

... indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossuses and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematieks; and the civility of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker.

It is we that are blind, not fortune; because our eye is too dim to discern the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.