Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English Physician and Philosopher

• "Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude: for I am above Atlas his shoulders". Religio_Medici

• "Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world" Religio Medici

• "We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us" Religio Medici

• "I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper,& I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and 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 a music where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres"...Religio Medici

• "I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others". Religio Medici

• "I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers". Religio Medici

• "No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another".-Religio Medici

• "There is surely a piece of divinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun".Religio Medici

• "The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes". Religio Medici

• "for the world, I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in". Religio Medici

• "I am in no way facetious,nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof". Religio Medici

• "There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him". -Religio Medici

• "Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself".-Religio Medici

• "I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles".-Religio Medici

• "I would 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 act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath commited" -Religio Medici

• "There is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume". -Religio Medici

• "I intend no Monopoly but a Community in Learning: I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves". -Religio Medici

• "thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds" -Religo Medici

• "But Man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the Grave. Solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre. Nor ommiting Ceremonies of Bravery in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible Sun within us"

Hydriotaphia%2C_Urn_Burial .

• "In the deep discovery of the subterranean world a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers". Urn-Burial

• "A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, wherof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers". Urn-Burial

• "But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge". The_Garden_of_Cyrus

• "The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia". The Garden of Cyrus

• "Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience". -Letter to a friend

• "And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry:" A Letter to a Friend

• "to make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun". - A letter to a Friend

• " Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies". Christian Morals

• "The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity". Christian Morals

• "He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself". Christian Morals

• "Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good."

• "All things are artificial, for Nature is the art of God."