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
We censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.
As sins proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that wert before it.
Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.
There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself.
Suicide is not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but when life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live; and herein religion hath taught us a noble example, for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scarvola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
Every Country hath its Machiavel.
He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.
We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.
If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.
Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors...
That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.
And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.
There is another man within me that's angry with me.