Thomas Browne Quotes

They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.

A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a
City, and yet bee forced to surrender; 'tis therefore farre better to enjoy her with peace, then to hazzard her on a battell.

What the sun compoundeth, fire analyzeth, not transmuteth. That devouring agent leaves almost always a morsel for the earth, whereof all things are but a colony; and which, if time permits, the mother element will have in their primitive mass again.

they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself.

Thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand & instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her, is to devolve the honor of God, the principall agent, upon the instrument; which if with reason we may doe, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writings

There is Dross, Alloy, and Embasement in all human Temper; and he flieth without Wings, who thinks to find Ophyr and pure Metal in any.

And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, extasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kisse of the Spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

He that looks for urns and old sepulchral relicks, must not seek them in the ruins of temples, where no religion anciently placed them. These were found in a field, according to ancient custom, in noble or private burial; the old practice of the Canaanites, the family of Abraham, and the burying-place of Joshua, in the borders of his possessions; and also agreeable unto Roman practice to bury by highways, whereby their monuments were under eye: — memorials of themselves, and mementoes of mortality unto living passengers; whom the epitaphs of great ones were fain to beg to stay and look upon them, — a language though sometimes used, not so proper in church inscriptions.

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.

All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one State depends upon the ruine of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatnesse, which must obey the swing of that wheele, not moved by Intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all Estates arise to their Zenith and vertical points, according to their predestinated periods. For the lives not onely of men but of Commonweales, and the whole World, nin not upon an Helix that still enlargeth, but on a Circle where arriving to their Meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the Horizon againe.

Schollers are men of peace, they beare no armes, but their tongues are sharper then Actius his razor, their pens carry farther, and give a lowder report than thunder; I had rather stand the shock of a Basilisco, than the fury of a mercilesse Pen.

... methinks we yet discourse in Plato's den, and are but embryon philosophers.

There is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheares; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the eare, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaime against all Church musicke. For my self, not only from my obedience but my particular genius, I doe embrace it; for even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer; there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers. It is an Hieroglyphicall and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and Creatures of God, such a melody to the eare, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In briefe it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in the eares of God.