Thomas Browne: Man

Thomas Browne was English polymath. Explore interesting quotes on man.

Thomas Browne: 156 quotes1 like

“I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.”

“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.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 6
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“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.”

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

“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.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 34
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 51
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.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

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

“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.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

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

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 10
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“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.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 44
Compare: "I know death hath ten thousand several doors / For men to take their exits.", John Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623); Act IV, scene ii.
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

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

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

“But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

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

“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.”

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

“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.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

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

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 6
Religio Medici (1643), Part I