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.
The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the ?quinox?
He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.
I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.
Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.
And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.
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.
We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.
Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.
Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant Religion.