Top 184 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Browne - Page 3

Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.

Oblivion is not to be hired.

Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.

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

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.

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line ure hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the Art of God.

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

There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.

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.

Women do most delight in revenge.

Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.

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

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end.

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

There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.

Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.

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

Should your riches increase, let your mind keep pace with them.

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.

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

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

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

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

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

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.

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.

Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.

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

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

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

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

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

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.

Since women do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive.

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

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

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

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.

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 is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

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.

Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.

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

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

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.

He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

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

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plan religion.

If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.

Where we desire to be informed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.

We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.

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.

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

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

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read may read our natures.

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.

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

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.