The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne Quotes

“We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.”
― Sir Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“There is no antidote against the Opium of time”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“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

“obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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