Thomas Browne

“ Yet shall I hardly expect a faded wreath and hesitant applause for a man of learning with ready wit and wealth of ease and solitude.
Pledging your time and labour to pure truth, yet watch that you study not your own small fame, while you claim to serve truth. Censure not modern writers, by whom you have advanced. If they err, reprove the fact but omit the name; do not praise distinguished men on all sides, and elsewhere taunt a blameless act. Though the stricken Achilles threatens no one, yet pray and act that the earth lie light on ancient names and the writers of old time. ”

“ Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties; which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great antiquity America lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us. ”

“ I bring the day to its close with a murderous weariness of words, I lie sleepless at night, my wakeful nose snores in vain. The moon will die before that lunatic is silent; unless Mercury soothes him down with his wand or turns him into a fish, it is hopeless to think of sleep.
It is useless for you to spread your table, vain to invite your guests; where that pea and nut merchant dines, the cross-river walker or anyone from the bridge will refuse. Even those who cultivate the long shadow are less afraid of a shade from the dead than of your shadower. ”

“ But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge; We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves, Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; ”

“ If the vilest glutton laid before us cocks’ combs, parrots’ heads, mules’ hooves, not even a starving man would taste them. What is madder than appetite? Aesop hungered for a hundred small birds compacted in one dish, Epicurus was satisfied with cabbage and cheese. Bring food to soothe appetite and satisfy nature; we are fools to await what the Trojan hog produces.
We are impatient today of the boned chicken Apicius praises and think it food for the toothless. For us a baron of beef is the crown of the feast, as was regular with Homer’s heroes. ”

“ But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition; and, finding no atropos unto the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. ”

“ Nor are only dark and green colors, but shades and shadows contrived through the great Volume of nature, and trees ordained not only to protect and shadow others, but by their shades and shadowing parts, to preserve and cherish themselves. The whole radiation or branchings shadowing the stock and the root, the leaves, the branches and fruit, too much exposed to the windes and scorching Sunne. ”

“ But to be content with Death may be better than to desire it: a miserable Life may make us wish for Death, but a virtuous one to rest in it; which is the advantage of those resolved Christians, who looking on Death not only as the sting, but the period and end of Sin, the Horizon and Isthmus between this Life and a better, and the Death of this World but as a Nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the common Necessity, and envy not Enoch or Elias. ”

“ The battle was undecided with the moon at the full, very little daylight, the wind favouring the Greeks, about the hour which proved calamitous to the mightiest of the Greek fleet, and their overthrow came as the day drew to its close.
The fight was near Giant's Hand not far from Woman's Rock and in the storied sea, where Sirius displays the marvellous enchantment.
The cause of this war was that of all wars, excess of prosperity. As wealth spreads spirits rise, and lust and greed of power appear ”

“ A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest, a graine of sulphur kindled in the blood may make a flame like Etna , and a small spark in the bowels of Olympias a lightning over all the chamber. ”

“ Who that reads the Parodist of Matro does not blame time for being no respecter of persons? Who will not desire a milder wearing away of time in the lost books of Antiphanes, Antigonus, Alexis and the others? so that sometimes we might reach the sharp wit of the Greeks, sometimes might see the bare Latin horn, now covered with Greek patches, which time will never lay bare. ”

“ When tis said in the Book of Wisdom that the earth is unto God but as sand, and as a drop of morning dew, therein may be implied the earth & water or the whole Terraqueous globe, but when 'tis delivered in the Apocalypse that the Angel set his right foot upon the sea and his left upon the earth, what further hidden sense there is in that distinction may further be considered. ”

“ We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. ”

“ From the ceiling to the floor everyone watched comic and savage acts with the same expression, few protest, more applaud. We ourselves in the end on the field of death repay in all seriousness the price of folly, mangled by disease, wounded in many darts, without the hope of release, we are dragged into the pit of hell. ”

“ Where truth is in doubt, where smatters question the Sibylline leaves more readily than the learned, watch that you send no prophecy before you. To think that mere chatter has come from the oasis of Ammon, shows a vain mind, little tried in the turns of nature, and is more fit for pedants who, not to admit ignorance, leave nothing in doubt. ”

“ Since the delightfull World comes after death, and Paradise succeeds the Grave. Since the verdant state of things is the Symbole of the Resurrection, and to flourish in the state of Glory, we must first be sown in corruption. ”

“ Those who take away vinegar, refuse the chief of seasonings. That is what those stern persons do, who say that Noah discovered wine. At the same time it could hardly have been made from apples, dates, grapes, and sour juices without vinegar becoming known even by chance. Yet who that knows the various drinks of the Americans will deny that some sort of intoxicants were made of old from fruits, berries or corn to warm their primitive sternness? ”

“ Half our dayes wee passe in the shadowe of the earth, and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. ”

“ Tho the uncertainty of the End of this World hath confounded all Humane Predictions; yet they who shall live to see the Sun and Moon darkned, and the Stars to fall from Heaven, will hardly be deceived in the Advent of the last Day; and therefore strange it is, that the common Fallacy of consumptive Persons, who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their Friends in perfect Health and Judgment. ”

“ Through storms, tumults, and the gusty winds of error the play of life is acted, the race is run, in which like drunkards not without expense of fame, fortune, and life we perform jingling trifles with a great effort, and (the summit of misfortune) in the doubtful course of age we reach the end of life before the goal of virtue. ”

“ Now countrified and uncouth, with his tasteless blanket of words, with his village jokes from beyond the pale, the little wretch, who ought to be sent to the gladiators, stirs my bile and stomach and soaks me in a veritable English sweat.
It is not me alone that he crucifies. That fool talker, that A 1 blatherer, empties the theatre. When he crows every wind-player slips away at once: the flutes, the pipers, the keeners, the singers to the waxing moon, betake themselves to flight. ”

“ Happy are they, which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions. With these hopes, Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.
It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature ”