Skip links

Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Browne (English Author, Physician)

Inspirational Quotations by Thomas Browne (English Author, Physician)

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

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

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Philosophy, Faith

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

Festination may prove Precipitation;
Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Procrastination

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

There is no road or ready way to virtue.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Virtue

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

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: Courage

Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Charity

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Solitude

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

Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies! Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue; The weeping messenger of grace from heaven.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Forgiveness

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 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

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

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

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.
—Thomas Browne

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

Were every one employed in points concordant to their natures, professions, and arts, commonwealths would rise up of themselves.
—Thomas Browne

Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Hatred

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Dying, Death

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Envy

He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Riches

There is another man within me that’s angry with me.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Anger

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

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 music where ever there is a harmony, order, or proportion: and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Music, Harmony

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
—Thomas Browne

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Success, Confidence, Self-reliance

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Truth

By compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Compassion

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

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Wealth

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.
—Thomas Browne

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

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

I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Knowledge

Women do most delight in revenge.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Revenge

Nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Nature

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

The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
—Thomas Browne
Topics: Virtue

Wondering Whom to Read Next?