Thomas Browne Quotes - Page 5

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

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.

Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.

Oblivion is not to be hired.

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.

We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.

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

Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.

I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof, 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures.

There is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.

There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.

Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?

Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.

Do the devils lie? No; for then even hell could not subsist.

With what shift and pains we come into the World we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it.

Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.

God hath varied the inclinations of men according to the variety of actions to be performed.

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

Art is the perfection of nature, ... nature is the art of God.

As sins proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that wert before it.

A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.

To be content with death may be better than to desire it.

I had rather stand the shock of a basilisk than the fury of a merciless pen.