Thomas Browne
... indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossuses and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematieks; and the civility of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker.Collection: Wise
To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe.Collection: Running
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.Collection: Numbers
To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief.Collection: Memories
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.Collection: Circles
Let any stranger find mee so pleasant a county, such good way, large heath, three such places as Norwich, Yar. and Lin. in any county of England, and I'll bee once again a vagabond to visit them.Collection: Bees
Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.Collection: Errors
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.Collection: Sleep
I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.Collection: Mystery
Nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Fancy
Tis hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for example.Collection: Age
He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.Collection: Needs
He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, For unto him a tomb's the Universe.Collection: Lying
Where we desire to be informed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.Collection: Men
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Circles
Gardens were before gardeners, and but some hours after the earth.Collection: Garden
The man without a navel still lives in me.Collection: Men
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.Collection: Deeds
I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.Collection: Beauty
Things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth.Collection: Publishing
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.Collection: Art
Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors.Collection: Mistake
Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.Collection: Happiness
The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.Collection: Fear
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.Collection: Fall
I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others.Collection: Pride
There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.Collection: Men
Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.Collection: Thyself
Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.Collection: Men
Study prophecies when they are become histories.Collection: Study
Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels.Collection: Men
I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.Collection: Dream
The service of love is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cool'd imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.Collection: Wise
Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.Collection: Real
He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.Collection: Honesty
If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.Collection: Confused
To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.Collection: Needs
That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.Collection: Improbable
Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.Collection: Men
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.Collection: Men
Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.Collection: Nature
Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy.Collection: Fancy
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.Collection: Men
For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.Collection: Life
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.Collection: Life
By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.Collection: Sadness
Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.Collection: Age