Thomas Browne

"When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose."

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

"I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself."

"A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender."

"Rich with the spoils of Nature."

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

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

"The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible."

"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."

"Art is the perfection of nature."

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

"Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good."

"Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion."

"Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds."

"This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death."

"I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us."

"Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once."

"We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us."

"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."

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

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

"There is no road or ready way to virtue."

"It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in."

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

"There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun."

"I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof."

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

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

"I thanke God for my happy Dreams|dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other;"

"Sleep is a death; oh, make me try By sleeping what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed."

"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."

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

"Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras."

"A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest."

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

"That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight."

"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."

"I look upon you as a gem of the old rock."

"In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers."