A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
– Sir Thomas Browne
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
– Sir Thomas Browne
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
– Sir Thomas Browne
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies! Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue; The weeping messenger of grace from heaven.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Death is the cure for all diseases.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
– Sir Thomas Browne
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.
– Sir Thomas Browne
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.
– Sir Thomas Browne
It is we that are blind, not fortune.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
– Sir Thomas Browne
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
– Sir Thomas Browne
To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
– Sir Thomas Browne
We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.
– Sir Thomas Browne
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.