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

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

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

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

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.
Thomas Browne

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.
Thomas Browne

Death is the cure for all diseases.
Thomas Browne

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

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

It is we that are blind, not fortune.
Thomas Browne


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

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

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

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

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

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
Thomas Browne

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.
Thomas Browne

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.
Thomas Browne

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

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