Quotes from Sir Thomas Browne

Not picked from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain.

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.

I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my Reason to an O altitudo!

Many… have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

All places, all airs make unto me one country; I am in England, everywhere, and under any meridian.

To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and, as some conjecture, all shall awake again?

I dare, without usurpation, assume the honorable style of a Christian.

That unextinguishable laugh in heaven.

With rich flames, and hired tears, they solemnized their obsequies.

An old and gray-headed error.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Times before you, when even 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.

Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For 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.

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.

We carry within us the wonders we seek around us

Yet do I believe that all this is true, which indeed my reason would persuade me to be false; and this I think is no vulgar part of faith to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to reason, and against the argument of our proper senses.

Where life is more terrible than death, it is the truest valor to dare to live.

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.

Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.

Let him have the key of thy heart who hath the lock of his own.