Thomas Browne Quotes

English polymath and author (1605–1682)

Sir Thomas Browne, MD (19 October 1605 – 19 October 1682) was an English author of varied works which disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.

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Alternative Names: Sir Thomas Browne

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

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.

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

We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

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

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.