Thomas Browne Quotes - Page 3

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.

Be deaf unto the suggestions of tale-bearers, calumniators, pick-thank or malevolent detractors, who, while quiet men sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society. These are the tongues that set the world on fire--cankerers of reputation, and, like that of Jonah's gourd, wither a good name in a single night.

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

There is no royal road or ready way to virtue.

Should your riches increase, let your mind keep pace with them.

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

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.

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

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

Lord deliver me from myself.

Festination may prove Precipitation; Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.

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

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

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.

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.

I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

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

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

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.

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

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