Sir Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682)
English author of varied works that disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.
When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.
The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.
For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.
The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.
That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day.
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
To keep our eyes open longer were but to set 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 could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.
A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest.
I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.
That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.
Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras..
The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.
Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.
I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.