Thomas Browne
There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.Collection: Moving
Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.Collection: Flattery
I had rather stand the shock of a basilisk than the fury of a merciless pen.Collection: Shock
That miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead.Collection: Life
Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.Collection: May
If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.Collection: Thinking
There is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.Collection: Order
Since women do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive.Collection: Revenge
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read may read our natures.Collection: Life
Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?Collection: Men
God hath varied the inclinations of men according to the variety of actions to be performed.Collection: Men
Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible.Collection: Men
I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.Collection: Wise
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.Collection: Vices
Oblivion is not to be hired.Collection: Oblivion
We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.Collection: Death
I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.Collection: Believe
I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.Collection: Community
Think not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity.Collection: Wise
A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.Collection: Men
Art is the perfection of nature, ... nature is the art of God.Collection: Art
I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.Collection: Knowledge
Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.Collection: Home
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.Collection: Men
I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof, 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures.Collection: Death
With what shift and pains we come into the World we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Art
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.Collection: Men
Rich with the spoils of nature.Collection: Nature
Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.Collection: Dying