SIR THOMAS BROWNE QUOTES

English physician & author (1605-1682)

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici

Tags: truth


All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


There is no road or ready way to virtue.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Urn Burial


Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Cyrus' Garden


He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Christian Morals


To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere Philosophy.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


Charity begins at home.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical mathematics of the city of heaven.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Cyrus' Garden


The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Urn Burial


A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


The inequity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Urn Burial


Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents and Commonly Presumed Truths


There is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


Old families last not three oaks.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Urn Burial


Time ... antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents


Every man is his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici


Men that look no farther than their outside, 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.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

attributed, Day's Collacon


There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici