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
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Face, Faces
Festination may prove Precipitation;
Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Procrastination
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Mathematics
Nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Nature
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
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
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
As sins proceed they ever multiply; and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that went before it.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Sin
Women do most delight in revenge.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Revenge
It is a brave act of valor to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death it is then the truest valor to dare to live.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Valor, Courage
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
There is no road or ready way to virtue.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Virtue
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
We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Sleep
He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Gossip
All the wonders you seek are within yourself.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Wonder
Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of caprice and passion.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Passion, Reason
He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Riches
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Death, Dying
There is another man within me that’s angry with me.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Anger
The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Virtue, Vice
No man can judge another, because no man knows himself, for we censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Judgment
We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Death
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of opinion be angry with his judgment for not agreeing in that from which, within a few days, I might dissent myself.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Opinion
Scholars are men of peace; they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than the sword; their pens carry further and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisk than in the fury of a merciless pen.
—Thomas Browne
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Faith, Philosophy
The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it, and may be after it.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Eternity, World
True affection is a body of enigmas, mysteries and riddles, wherein two so become one that they both become two.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Love
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 way of coition.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Birth
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Hatred, Hate
By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Mercy, Compassion
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Reason
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
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
Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Sleep
Death is the cure for all diseases.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Death, Dying
Were every one employed in points concordant to their natures, professions, and arts, commonwealths would rise up of themselves.
—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: Nature, Art
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Wonder, Money, Wealth
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