Thomas Browne Quotes

159 Sourced Quotes

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

Thomas Browne
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.

Thomas Browne
He forgets that he can die who complains of misery, we are in the power of no calamity, while death is in our own.

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

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

Thomas Browne
Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors...

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

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

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

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

Thomas Browne
The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

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

Thomas Browne
Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.

Thomas Browne
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.

Thomas Browne
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.

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

Thomas Browne
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

Thomas Browne
These dead bones have... quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests.

Thomas Browne
At my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand.

Thomas Browne
There are infirmities, not onely of body, but of soule, and fortunes, which doe require the mercifull hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance but behold him with as much pity as I doe Lazarus.

Thomas Browne
Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.

Thomas Browne
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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

Thomas Browne
But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.

Thomas Browne
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.

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

Thomas Browne
Many from the ignorance of these Maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth: A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender.

Thomas Browne
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.

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

Thomas Browne
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