Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82) was an English polymath—a physician, natural historian, antiquary, and moralist. He is celebrated for his inquiries into religion, morality, science, and human error and his masterly prose style.
Born in Cheapside, London, Browne studied medicine at Oxford, Montpellier, and Padua. After receiving a doctorate from Leiden, he settled in 1637 at Norwich, where he lived and practiced the rest of his life.
Browne’s most famous work is his earliest, the Religio Medici (1642,) an affirmation of Christian faith. It brought to light the mysteries of the spiritual life and became an immediate success throughout Europe, but the Catholic Church criticized it.
Browne’s most substantial work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Errors (1646,) reexamined many longstanding beliefs in natural history, physiology, iconography, geography, history, and biblical and classical history in the light of reason and experience.
Browne then wrote Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial (1658,) considered to be the first archaeological discourse in English. The Garden of Cyrus (1658) contends that the number five pervaded not only all the horticulture of antiquity but that it recurs throughout all plant life—as well as in the ‘figurations’ of animals.
Browne’s posthumous publications include Christian Morals (1716,) a half-finished follow-on to Religio Medici.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Browne
Were every one employed in points concordant to their natures, professions, and arts, commonwealths would rise up of themselves.
—Thomas Browne
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
—Thomas Browne
I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Logic
We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Death
Nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Nature
The whole world is a phylactery, and everything we see is an item of the wisdom, power, or goodness of God.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: God
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul.—It is the litigation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Dreams
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Death, Dying
Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Charity
In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Passion
Where we desire to be informed ’tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, ’tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Arguments
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Potential
It is we that are blind, not fortune; because our eye is too dim to discern the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Eyes
Of all men, a philosopher should be no swearer; for an oath, which is the end of controversies in law, cannot determine any here, where reason only must decide.
—Thomas Browne
Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Praise
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
Topics: Health
The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Virtue, Vice
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Fame
Content may dwell in all stations. To be low, but above contempt, may be high enough to be happy.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings
By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Mercy, Compassion
Charity 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
Topics: Charity
Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies! Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue; The weeping messenger of grace from heaven.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Repentance, Forgiveness
All the wonders you seek are within yourself.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Wonder
Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Friendship
And first Satan’s endeavours have ever been, and they cease not yet to instill a belief in the minde of man, There is no God at all… . that the necessity of his entity dependeth upon ours, and is but a Politicall Chymera… . Where he succeeds not thus high, he labours to introduce a secondary and deductive Atheisme; that although, men concede there is a God, yet … that he intendeth only the care of the species or common natures, but letteth loose the guard of individuals, and single existencies therein: That he looks not below the Moon, but hath designed the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferiour deputations. To promote which apprehensions or empuzzell their due conceptions, he casteth in the notions of fate, destiny, fortune, chance and necessity… . Whereby extinguishing in mindes the compensation of vertue and vice, the hope and fear of heaven or hell; they comply in their actions unto the drift of his delusions… .
—Thomas Browne
Topics: God
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Truth
Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.
—Thomas Browne
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Art, Nature
Though I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice, yet for my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread ot my days: not because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Life
Much that we call evil is really good in disguise; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Evils
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