Thomas Browne

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

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

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.

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.

Affection should not be too sharp eyed and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man.

To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, and fill his snuffbox, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.

It is we that are blind, not fortune.

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

Let age not envy draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.

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

All the wonders you seek are within yourself.

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plan religion.

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

Death is the cure for all diseases.

A diamond which is the hardest of stones not yielding unto steel emery or any other thing is yet made soft by the blood of a goat.

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

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

Affection should not be too sharp eyed, and love is not made by magnifying glasses.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.

Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

We all labor against our own cure for death is the cure of all diseases.

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

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.

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.