Thomas Browne Quotes

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

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 4

“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.”

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Thomas Browne: Trending quotes

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

Section 3
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“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.”

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“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.”

Section 15
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Thomas Browne Quotes

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

Section 6
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

On Dreams

“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.”

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.”

Section 34
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

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

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“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? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.”

Section 51
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

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

On Dreams

“Art is the perfection of nature.”

Dedication
Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658)

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

Section 16
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter I

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

Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 5, Ch. 22, sect. 6

“But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.”

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.”

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 5

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part I, Section XXIV
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

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

“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.”

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“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.”

Section 2
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.”

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.”

Section 25
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.”

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

“He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.”

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part I, Section XXXIV
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

“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.”

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

On Dreams

“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.”

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“There is no road or ready way to virtue.”

Section 16
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.”

Section 55
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day.”

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V. Cf Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars: "Tiberius," Ch 70

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

Opening lines of Ch. 1
The Garden of Cyrus (1658)

“Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.”

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter IV

“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.”

Section 25
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“Rich with the spoils of Nature.”

Section 15
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“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.”

Section 8
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

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

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“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.”

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“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.”

Section 44
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“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.”

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

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

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“To keep our eyes open longer were but to set our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?”

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

“Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.”

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 5

“That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.”

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

“To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.”

On Dreams

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part III, Section XII
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

“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.”

“Pursue Virtue virtuously.”

Section 45
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.”

These words also appear in Christian Morals, Part I, Section I
Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

“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.”

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

“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.”

Dedication
Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658)