Thomas Browne - Live Quotes

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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
Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live... in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one [world] to sense, there are two to reason; the one visible; the other invisible.

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

Thomas Browne
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.

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
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it.

Thomas Browne
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.

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

Thomas Browne
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. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment.

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

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

Thomas Browne