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.
Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.
Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? without the favour of the everlasting Register the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methusaleh's long life had been his only Chronicle.
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 term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.
Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.
I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others.
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magic of numbers.
In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.
Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies.
Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.
Rich with the spoils of Nature.
Art is the perfection of nature.
There is no road or ready way to virtue.
To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.
Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others.
Many from the ignorance of these Maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth: A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender.
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.
Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.
That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.
Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.