Thomas Browne

I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.

Be Charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and loose not the glory of the Mite.

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.

Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own.

Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.

All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

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

For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.

There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.

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