WIST

The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Christian Morals, Part III (1716)

Yet is every man his own greatest enemy, and as it were his own executioner.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, II.4 (1643)

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, pt. 1, sec. 25 (1643).

This is also a miracle; not to produce effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create nature, as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too narrowly define the power of God, restraining it to our capacities.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, 1.26 (1642) [ed. Symonds (1886)]

I can hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a Hell.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, I.52 (1643)

I desire to exercise my faith in the most difficult point, for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing Christ’s Sepulchre, and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not the miracle. Now contrarily I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor His Disciples; I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ’s patients, on whom He wrought His wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, I.9 (1643)

There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage to the sun.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, II.11 (1643)

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, II.4 (1643)

There is another man within me that’s angry with me.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, II.7 (1643)

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, pt. I, sec. 25 (1643)

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. … 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.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Urn-Burial (1658)