Thomas Browne Quotes - Page 7

There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself.

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

Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.

Study prophecies when they are become histories.

Gardens were before gardeners, and but some hours after the earth.

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line ure hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the Art of God.

Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels.

The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.

The man without a navel still lives in me.

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors.

To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.

Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.

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.

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

He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.

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

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

The service of love is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

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.

Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.

If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.