Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Brownewas an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Browne's literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffering from melancholia, his writings are also characterised by wit...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 October 1605
Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible.
We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
All the wonders you seek are within yourself.
What then is the wisdom of the times called old? Is it the wisdom of gray hairs? No. It is the wisdom of the cradle.
Be thou what thou singly art and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and live but one man.
The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.
That miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny; but I have no confidence on those which are fathered on the dead.
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.
The man without a navel still lives in me.
Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line ure hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the Art of God.