Quotes from Thomas Browne

We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all disease.

All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express their natures.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many million faces, there should be none alike.

In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment; where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.

It is we that are blind, not Fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, For unto him a tomb's the Universe.

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.

A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.

There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike...

For there are mystically in our faces certain characteristics which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A B C may read our natures.

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.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors...

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.