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Thomas Browne Quotes

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Thomas Browne, born on October 19, 1605 and died on October 19, 1682, was a renowned English doctor, writer, and philosopher of the 17th century. He is known for his profound philosophical thoughts and deep insights into the human existence.

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All Men Death World May Reason Burial Way Life Dying Nature Urn Virtue All Things Dies Enemy Grave Graves Should Sleep Thinking

Famous Thomas Browne Quotes

“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 designes...We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations.”

Ambition Vanity Antiquity Burial

Book:Religio Medici / Urne-Buriall

Source: Religio Medici / Urne-Buriall

“What virtue yet sleeps in this terra damnata and aged cinders, were petty magic to experiment. These crumbling relicks and long fired particles superannuate such expectations; bones, hairs, nails, and teeth of the dead, were the treasures of old sorcerers.”

Death Dead Burial Grave Tomb Relic Urn Terra Damnata

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“He that looks for urns and old sepulchral relicks, must not seek them in the ruins of temples, where no religion anciently placed them. These were found in a field, according to ancient custom, in noble or private burial; the old practice of the Canaanites, the family of Abraham, and the burying-place of Joshua, in the borders of his possessions; and also agreeable unto Roman practice to bury by highways, whereby their monuments were under eye:--memorials of themselves, and mementoes of mortality unto living passengers; whom the epitaphs of great ones were fain to beg to stay and look upon them,--a language though sometimes used, not so proper in church inscriptions.”

Death Ruins Monument Burial Grave Temple Tomb Relic Urn

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.”

Death Time Family Dying Dead Generation Burial Grave

Author:Thomas Browne

“To be knav'd out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials.”

Death Burial Grave Cremation Urn Buring Burial

Author:Thomas Browne

“Some, finding many fragments of skulls in these urns, suspected a mixture of bones; in none we searched was there cause of such conjecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice.--The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in their manes. And many were so curious to continue their living relations, that they contrived large and family urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral memorials lay in minor vessels about them.”

Love Family Couple Burial Tomb Cremation Urn

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“In the Jewish hypogæum and subterranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of Anthony and Jerome we meet with thigh-bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories; not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but iterately affecting the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts, and hinting imagery of the resurrection, which is the life of the grave, and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles and pismires.”

Christian Death Afterlife Jewish Burial Grave Tomb Martyrs Urn

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“What the sun compoundeth, fire analyzeth, not transmuteth. That devouring agent leaves almost always a morsel for the earth, whereof all things are but a colony; and which, if time permits, the mother element will have in their primitive mass again.”

Earth Death Burial Cremation Urn

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.”

Death Fire Sorrow Weeping Burial Grave Cremation Urn

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and return into their chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live, had they known any.”

Death Heaven Hell Afterlife Dead Burial Purgatory

Book:Urne Burial

Source: Urne Burial

“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.”

Life Long Dying Habit Burial

Author:Thomas Browne