Best 170 quotes of Thomas Browne on MyQuotes

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Think before you act; think twice before you speak.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

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

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.

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

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

All the Navel therefore and conjunctive part we can suppose in Adam, was his dependency on his Maker, and the connexion he must needs have unto heaven, who was the Sonne of God. For holding no dependence on any preceding efficient but God; in the act of his production there may be conceived some connexion, and Adam to have been in a moment all Navel with his Maker. And although from his carnality and corporal existence, the conjunction seemeth no nearer than of causality and effect; yet in his immortall and diviner part he seemed to hold a nearer coherence, and an umbilicality even with God himself. And so indeed although the propriety of this part be found but in some animals, and many species there are which have no Navell at all; yet is there one link and common connexion, one general ligament, and necessary obligation of all whatever unto God. Whereby although they act themselves at distance, and seem to be at loose; yet doe they hold a continuity with their Maker. Which catenation or conserving union when ever his pleasure shall divide, let goe, or separate, they shall fall from their existence, essence, and operations; in brief, they must retire unto their primitive nothing, and shrink into that Chaos again.

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