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Quotes from Religio Medici — Thomas Browne

1605–1682 England

← All quotes by Thomas Browne

49 quotes

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

Religio Medici (1643)

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.

Religio Medici (1643)

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.

Religio Medici (1643)

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse,
For unto him a tomb's the Universe.

Religio Medici (1642)

It is a brave act of valour to contemne death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live.

Religio Medici (1642)

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

Religio Medici (1643)

I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.

Religio Medici (1643)

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

Religio Medici (1643)

Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.

Religio Medici (1643)

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.

Religio Medici (1643)

Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.

Religio Medici (1643)

The thousand doors that lead to death.

Religio Medici (1642)

Rich with the spoils of Nature.

Religio Medici (1643)

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.

Religio Medici (1643)

Sleep is a death, O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die:
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.

Religio Medici (1642)

Art is the perfection of nature.

Religio Medici (1643)

We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us.

Religio Medici (1643)

I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others

Religio Medici (1643)

Sleep is a death; oh, make me try
By sleeping what it is to die,
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed.

Religio Medici (1643)

There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe… For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures.

Religio Medici (1643)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Browne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.