Thomas Browne - Religio Medici

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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.

Thomas Browne
Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.

Thomas Browne
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magic of numbers.

Thomas Browne
There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A. B. C. may read our natures.

Thomas Browne
I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others

Thomas Browne
How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.

Thomas Browne
I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

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

Thomas Browne
Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

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

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

Thomas Browne
The world that I regard is myself, it is the Microcosme of mine own frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

Thomas Browne
In briefe, all things are artificiall, for nature is the Art of God.

Thomas Browne
I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

Thomas Browne
I have tried if I could reach that great resolution... to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.

Thomas Browne
The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

Thomas Browne
Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.

Thomas Browne
We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

Thomas Browne
Not wrung from speculations and subtleties, but from common sense, and observation; not picked from the leaves of any author, but bred among the weeds and tares of mine own brain.

Thomas Browne