English physician & author (1605-1682)
A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
There is no road or ready way to virtue.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Urn Burial
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Cyrus' Garden
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere Philosophy.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Christian Morals
All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical mathematics of the city of heaven.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Cyrus' Garden
A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Urn Burial
The inequity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Urn Burial
Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents and Commonly Presumed Truths
Charity begins at home.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
There is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Old families last not three oaks.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Urn Burial
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Time ... antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents
Every man is his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Men that look no farther than their outside, 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.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici