Quote

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

Thomas Browne

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Thomas Browne
Age: 77 †
Born: 1605
Born: October 19
Died: 1682
Died: October 19
Author
Philosopher
Physician
Physician Writer
Writer
London
England
Sir Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
Best
Figures
Logic
Created
Express
Beauty
Bear
Toad
Call
Forms
Toads
Action
Actions
Elephant
Tell
Ugly
Elephants
Cannot
Shapes
Outward
Form
Bears
Inward

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Art is the perfection of nature, ... nature is the art of God.
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Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
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Festination may prove Precipitation Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
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The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.
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Since women do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive.
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Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.
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Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.
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There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.
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Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.
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Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
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The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.
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For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
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To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.
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I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to an O altitudo.
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Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.
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To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.
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If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.
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Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while families last not three oaks.
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Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.
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