Thomas Browne Quotes

Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not but three oaks.

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

I could never divide my selfe from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with mee in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent my selfe...

All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

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? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

for by compassion we make anothers misery our own, and so by relieving them, we relieve our selves also.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

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

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

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying

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.

united soules are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truely each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.

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

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.

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse.