Sir Thomas Browne Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Sir Thomas Browne. Here they are! All 64 of them:

β€œ
We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender it - this was the wise saying of Sir Thomas Browne.
”
”
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
β€œ
I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure, of knowledge; 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.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
...he plundered the living treasure of those shelves. There was Burton's marvelous Anatomy, his staggering erudition never smelling of the dust or of the lamp...There was the dark tremendous music of Sir Thomas Browne, and Hooker's sounding and tremendous passion made great by genius and made true by faith.
”
”
Thomas Wolfe
β€œ
Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
No one rejoices more in revenge than women, wrote Juvenal. Women do most delight in revenge, wrote Sir Thomas Browne. Sweet is revenge, especially to women, wrote Lord Byron. And I say, I wonder why, boys. I wonder why.
”
”
Siri Hustvedt (The Blazing World)
β€œ
Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici: β€œWith what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ’tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.
”
”
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
β€œ
This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
We carry within us the wonders we seek around us
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
Nuland remembered Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici: β€œWith what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ’tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.
”
”
Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
β€œ
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (1658)
”
”
Gavin Francis (Adventures in Human Being)
β€œ
The greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to be ghosts unto our own eyes.’ Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals
”
”
Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)
β€œ
The result of the scientific work we have been considering was that the outlook of educated men was completely transformed. At the beginning of the century, Sir Thomas Browne took part in trials for witchcraft; at the end, such a thing would have been impossible. In Shakespeare's time, comets were still portents; after the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, it was known that he and Halley had calculated the orbits of certain comets, and that they were as obedient as the planets to the law of gravitation. The reign of law had established its hold on men's imaginations, making such things as magic and sorcery incredible. In 1700 the mental outlook of educated men was completely modern; in 1600, except among a very few, it was still largely medieval.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition)
β€œ
It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times. β€” SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Β  That
”
”
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
β€œ
There is a class whose value I should designate as Favorites: such as Froissart's Chronicles; Southey's Chronicle of the Cid ; Cervantes ; Sully's Memoirs ; Rabelais ; Montaigne ; Izaak Walton; Evelyn; Sir Thomas Browne; Aubrey ; Sterne ; Horace Walpole ; Lord Clarendon ; Doctor Johnson ; Burke, shedding floods of light on his times ; Lamb; Landor ; and De Quincey ;- a list, of course, that may easily be swelled, as dependent on individual caprice. Many men are as tender and irritable as lovers in reference to these predilections. Indeed, a man's library is a sort of harem, and I observe that tender readers have a great pudency in showing their books to a stranger.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β€œ
There is no antidote against the Opium of time
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Search whike thou wilt, and let thy reason goe To ransome truth even to the Abysse below. Rally the scattered causes, and that line Which nature twists be able to untwine.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Many friends have helped me in writing this book. Some are dead and so illustrious that I scarcely dare name them, yet no one can read or write without being perpetually in the debt of Defoe, Sir Thomas Browne, Sterne, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Macaulay, Emily Bronte, De Quincey, and Walter Pater β€” to name the first that come to mind. Others are alive, and though perhaps as illustrious in their own way, are less formidable for that very reason.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
β€œ
(...) Sir Boris had fought and killed the Paynim; Sir Gawain, the Turk; Sir Miles, the Pole; Sir Andrew, the Frank; Sir Richard, the Austrian; Sir Jordan, the Frenchman; and Sir Herbert, the Spaniard. But of all that killing and campaigning, that drinking and love-making, that spending and hunting and riding and eating, what remained? A skull; a finger. Whereas, he said, turning to the page of Sir Thomas Browne, which lay open upon the table – and again he paused. Like an incantation rising from all parts of the room, from the night wind and the moonlight, rolled the divine melody of those words which, lest they should outstare this page, we will leave where they lie entombed, not dead, embalmed rather, so fresh is their colour, so sound their breathing – and Orlando, comparing that achievement with those of his ancestors, cried out that they and their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man and his words were immortal.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
β€œ
wee carry with us the wonders we seeke without us: There is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learnes in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endlesse volume.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Standing upright in the solitude of his room, he vowed that he would be the first poet of his race and bring immortal lustre upon his name. He said (reciting the names and exploits of his ancestors) that Sir Boris had fought and killed the Paynim; Sir Gawain, the Turk; Sir Miles, the Pole; Sir Andrew, the Frank; Sir Richard, the Austrian; Sir Jordan, the Frenchman; and Sir Herbert, the Spaniard. But of all that killing and campaigning, that drinking and lovemaking, that spending and hunting and riding and eating, what remained? A skull; a finger. Whereas, he said, turning to the page of Sir Thomas Browne, which lay open upon the table - and again he paused. Like an incantation rising from all parts of the room, from the night wind and the moonlight, rolled the divine melody of those words which, lest they should outstare this page, we will leave where they lie entombed, not dead, embalmed rather, so fresh is their colour, so sound their breathing - and Orlando, comparing that achievement with those of his ancestors, cried out that they and their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man and his words were immortal,
”
”
Virginia Dalloway, Orlando
β€œ
All the Navel therefore and conjunctive part we can suppose in Adam, was his dependency on his Maker, and the connexion he must needs have unto heaven, who was the Sonne of God. For holding no dependence on any preceding efficient but God; in the act of his production there may be conceived some connexion, and Adam to have been in a moment all Navel with his Maker. And although from his carnality and corporal existence, the conjunction seemeth no nearer than of causality and effect; yet in his immortall and diviner part he seemed to hold a nearer coherence, and an umbilicality even with God himself. And so indeed although the propriety of this part be found but in some animals, and many species there are which have no Navell at all; yet is there one link and common connexion, one general ligament, and necessary obligation of all whatever unto God. Whereby although they act themselves at distance, and seem to be at loose; yet doe they hold a continuity with their Maker. Which catenation or conserving union when ever his pleasure shall divide, let goe, or separate, they shall fall from their existence, essence, and operations; in brief, they must retire unto their primitive nothing, and shrink into that Chaos again.
”
”
Thomas Browne (Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (Oxford English texts))
β€œ
Live by old Ethicks and the classical Rules of Honesty. Put no new names or notions upon Authentick Virtues and Vices. Think not that Morality is Ambulatory; that Vices in one age are not Vices in another; or that Virtues, which are under the everlasting Seal of right Reason, may be Stamped by Opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert the opinion of things, and set up a new Ethicks against Virtue, yet hold thou unto old Morality; and rather than follow a multitude to do evil, stand like Pompey's pillar conspicuous by thyself, and single in Example of Virtue; since no Deluge of Vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape; Eye well those Heroes who have held their Heads above Water, who have touched Pitch, and have not been defiled, and in the common Contagion have remained uncorrupted.
”
”
Thomas Browne
β€œ
Quella durata che rende le Piramidi pilastri di neve, e tutto il passato un attimo. Sir Thomas Brown
”
”
Raymond Carver (Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose)
β€œ
(In regards to Sir Thomas Browne) "The man who begins so circumspectly quickly becomes a high-wire performer in the realm of religious truth and mystery" (Seelig 16).
”
”
Sharon Cadman Seelig
β€œ
The man who begins so circumspectly quickly becomes a high-wire performer in the realm of religious truth and mystery" (Barbour & Preston 16 from Title: Sir Thomas Browne: The World Proposed).
”
”
Sharon Cadman Seelig
β€œ
Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight. β€”SIR THOMAS BROWNE,
”
”
Clive James (Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts)
β€œ
Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici.
”
”
Michael Bliss (William Osler: A Life in Medicine)
β€œ
The covenant which Sir Thomas Browne made with himself is well known, but one may venture to refer to it once more: β€˜To pray in all places where quietness inviteth; in any house, highway, or street; and to know no street in this city that may not witness that I have not forgotten God and my Saviour in it; and that no parish or town where I have been may not say the like. To
”
”
David M. McIntyre (The Hidden Life of Prayer)
β€œ
The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust... I will take, for an example, Sir Thomas Browne, as to whom the average person has no offensive juvenile memories. He is bound to have read somewhere that the style of Sir Thomas Browne is unsurpassed by anything in English literature. One day he sees the Religio Medici in a shop-window (or, rather, outside a shop-window, for he would hesitate about entering a bookshop), and he buys it, by way of a mild experiment. He does not expect to be enchanted by it; a profound instinct tells him that Sir Thomas Browne is β€œnot in his line”; and in the result he is even less enchanted than he expected to be. He reads the introduction, and he glances at the first page or two of the work. He sees nothing but words. The work makes no appeal to him whatever. He is surrounded by trees, and cannot perceive the forest. He puts the book away. If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he will say, β€œYes, very fine!” with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne are vain and conceited poseurs. After a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel! And so on for perhaps a decade, until his commerce with the classics finally expires! That, magazines and newish fiction apart, is the literary history of the average decent person.
”
”
Arnold Bennett (Literary Taste)
β€œ
And Sir Thomas Browne… remarks in a passage of the Pseudodoxia Epidemica that I can no longer find that in the Holland of his time it was customary, in a home where there had been a death, to drape black mourning ribbons over all the mirrors and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruits of the field, so that the soul, as it left the body, would not be distracted on its final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land now being lost for ever.
”
”
W.G. Sebald
β€œ
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude. β€”Sir Thomas Browne
”
”
Robyn Carr (What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1))
β€œ
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself.
”
”
Thomas Browne (Hydriotaphia (Urn Burial); The Garden of Cyrus; Letter To A Friend: Thomas Browne's three most famous works)
β€œ
This, then, was the Bushido teachingβ€”bear and face all calamities and adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius23 taught, β€œWhen Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.” True honor lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no death incurred in so doing is ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne’s, Religio Medici, there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in our Precepts. Let me quote it: β€œIt 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.
”
”
Nitobe Inazō (Bushido: The Soul of Japan (AmazonClassics Edition))
β€œ
All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one State depends upon the ruine of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatnesse, which must obey the swing of that wheele, not moved by Intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all Estates arise to their Zenith and verticall points, according to their predistinated periods. For the lives not onely of men, but of Commonweales, and the whole World, run not upon an Helix that still enlargeth, but on a Circle where arriving to their Meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the Horizon againe.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
It is a brave act of valour to contemne death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
I am no Plant that will not prosper out of a Garden. All places, all ayres make unto me one Country
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
for by compassion we make anothers misery our own, and so by relieving them, we relieve our selves also.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Schollers are men of peace, they beare no armes, but their tongues are sharper then Actius his razor, their pens carry farther, and give a lowder report than thunder; I had rather stand the shock of a Basilisco, than the fury of a mercilesse Pen.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also vertue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to adde unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a passion, whose single nature is already above his patience; this was the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper injury than the downe-right blowes of the Devill.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
united soules are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truely each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosme, and carries the whole world about him
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Let not the Sun in Capricorn go down upon thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in Ashes. Draw the Curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up in the Tower of Oblivion and let them be as though they had not been.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
There is Dross, Alloy, and Embasement in all human Temper; and he flieth without Wings, who thinks to find Ophyr and pure Metal in any.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
Look upon Opinions as thou doest upon the Moon, and chuse not the dark hemisphere for thy contemplation. Embrace not the opacous and blind side of Opinions, but that which looks most Luciferously or influentially unto Goodness.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
To believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere Philosophy. β€”Sir Thomas Browne
”
”
Nora Roberts (The Becoming (The Dragon Heart Legacy, #2))
β€œ
It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction.
”
”
Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici)
β€œ
A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet bee forced to surrender; 'tis therefore farre better to enjoy her with peace, then to hazzard her on a battell.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
for as though there were a Metempsuchosis, and the soule of one man passed into another, opinions doe find after certain revolutions, men and mindes like those that first begat them.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one State depends upon the ruine of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatnesse, which must obey the swing of that wheele, not moved by Intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all Estates arise to their Zenith and vertical points, according to their predestinated periods. For the lives not onely of men but of Commonweales, and the whole World, nin not upon an Helix that still enlargeth, but on a Circle where arriving to their Meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the Horizon againe.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
tis we that are blind, not fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
we are onely that amphibious piece betweene a corporall and spiritual essence, that middle forme that linkes those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extreames, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures.
”
”
Thomas Browne (The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne)
β€œ
For although in that ancient and diffused adoration of Idols, unto the Priests and subtiler heads, the worship perhaps might be symbolical, and as those Images some way related unto their Deities; yet was the Idolatry direct and down-right in the people; whose credulity is illimitable, who may be made believe that any thing is God; and may be made believe there is no God at all.
”
”
Thomas Browne (Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica Volume 1)
β€œ
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. β€”Sir Thomas Browne
”
”
Nora Roberts (The Rise of Magicks (Chronicles of The One, #3))
β€œ
Yet do I believe that all this is true, which indeed my reason would persuade me to be false; and this I think is no vulgar part of faith to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to reason, and against the argument of our proper senses.
”
”
Thomas Browne (Religio Medici)
β€œ
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude. β€”Sir Thomas Browne
”
”
Robyn Carr (What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1))
β€œ
Hence, too, the terminology of the act. β€˜Suicide’, which is a Latinate and relatively abstract word, appeared late. The OED dates the first use as 1651; I found the word a little earlier in Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, written in 1635, published in 1642.f But it was still sufficiently rare not to appear
”
”
Al Álvarez (The Savage God: A Study of Suicide)