Quotes by Thomas Browne

All the Navel therefore and conjunctive part we can suppose in Adam, was his dependency on his Maker, and the connexion he must needs have unto heaven, who was the Sonne of God. For holding no dependence on any preceding efficient but God; in the act of his production there may be conceived some connexion, and Adam to have been in a moment all Navel with his Maker. And although from his carnality and corporal existence, the conjunction seemeth no nearer than of causality and effect; yet in his immortall and diviner part he seemed to hold a nearer coherence, and an umbilicality even with God himself. And so indeed although the propriety of this part be found but in some animals, and many species there are which have no Navell at all; yet is there one link and common connexion, one general ligament, and necessary obligation of all whatever unto God. Whereby although they act themselves at distance, and seem to be at loose; yet doe they hold a continuity with their Maker. Which catenation or conserving union when ever his pleasure shall divide, let goe, or separate, they shall fall from their existence, essence, and operations; in brief, they must retire unto their primitive nothing, and shrink into that Chaos again.

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.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

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

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

This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.

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

But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse.

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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

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

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

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

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

Death is the cure for all diseases.

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.

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

“There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.”

“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.”