Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Wealth, Money, Wonder

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

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

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

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

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.
Thomas Browne
Topics: Gossip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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