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Life Itself Is But The Shadow Of Death, And Souls Departed But The Shadows Of The Living: All Things Fall Under This Name. The Sun Itself Is But The Dark Simulacrum, And The Light But The Shadow Of God.

-Thomas Browne

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Life Itself Is But

Thomas Browne

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Life Itself Is But The Shadow Of Death, And Souls Departed But The Shadows Of The Living: All Things Fall Under This Name. The Sun Itself Is But The Dark Simulacrum, And The Light But The Shadow Of God.

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Shadow Of Death

More From Thomas Browne

Should Your Riches Increase, Let Your Mind Keep Pace With Them.

Gravestones Tell Truth Scarce Forty Years.

We Censure Others But As They Disagree From That Humor Which We Fancy Laudable In Ourselves, And Commend Others But For That Wherein They Seem To Quadrate And Consent With Us.

Grave-stones Tell Truth Scarce Forty Years. Generations Pass While Families Last Not Three Oaks.

There Is Something In Us That Can Be Without Us, And Will Be After Us, Though Indeed It Hath No History Of What It Was Before Us, And Cannot Tell How It Entered Into Us.

Flattery Is A Juggler, And No Kin Unto Sincerity.

Let Him Have The Key Of Thy Heart, Who Hath The Lock Of His Own.

I Envy No Man That Knows More Than Myself, But Pity Them That Know Less.

I Intend No Monopoly, But A Community In Learning; I Study Not For My Own Sake Only, But For Theirs That Study Not For Themselves.

Forcible Ways Make Not An End Of Evil, But Leave Hatred And Malice Behind Them.

Every Country Hath Its Machiavel.

Yes, Even Amongst Wiser Militants, How Many Wounds Have Been Given, And Credits Slain, For The Poor Victory Of An Opinion, Or Beggarly Conquest Of A Distinction.

Sleep Is A Death, O Make Me Try By Sleeping, What It Is To Die, And As Gently Lay My Head On My Grave, As Now My Bed.

Things Evidently False Are Not Only Printed, But Many Things Of Truth Most Falsely Set Forth.

All Things Are Artificial, For Nature Is The Art Of God.

The Mortalist Enemy Unto Knowledge, And That Which Hath Done The Greatest Execution Unto Truth, Has Been A Preemptory Adhesion Unto Authority.

Had Not Almost Every Man Suffered By The Press, Or Were Not The Tyranny Thereof Become Universal, I Had Not Wanted Reason For Complaint.

Think Before You Act; Think Twice Before You Speak.

Think Before You Act

Let Age, Not Envy, Draw Wrinkles On Thy Cheeks.

Death Hath A Thousand Doors To Let Out Life. I Shall Find One.

Oblivion Is Not To Be Hired.

As Reason Is A Rebel To Faith, So Passion Is A Rebel To Reason.

Nature Proceeds Little By Little From Things Lifeless To Animal Life In Such A Way That It Is Impossible To Determine The Exact Line Ure Hath Made One World, And Art Another. In Brief, All Things Are Artificial; For Nature Is The Art Of God.

We Carry Within Us The Wonders We Seek Without Us.

With What Shift And Pains We Come Into The World We Remember Not; But 'tis Commonly Found No Easy Matter To Get Out Of It.

Be Substantially Great In Thyself, And More Than Thou Appearest Unto Others.

To Believe Only Possibilities Is Not Faith, But Mere Philosophy.

Suicide Is Not To Fear Death, But Yet To Be Afraid Of Life. It Is A Brave Act Of Valour To Contemn Death; But When Life Is More Terrible Than Death, It Is Then The Truest Valour To Dare To Live; And Herein Religion Hath Taught Us A Noble Example, For All The Valiant Acts Of Curtius, Scarvola, Or Codrus, Do Not Parallel Or Match That One Of Job.

Not To Be Content With Life Is The Unsatisfactory State Of Those Which Destroy Themselves; Who Being Afraid To Live, Run Blindly Upon Their Own Death, Which No Man Fears By Experience.

Obstinacy In A Bad Cause Is But Constancy In A Good.

Art Is The Perfection Of Nature, ... Nature Is The Art Of God.

I Had Rather Stand The Shock Of A Basilisk Than The Fury Of A Merciless Pen.

Quotation Mistakes, Inadvertency, Expedition, And Human Lapses, May Make Not Only Moles But Warts In Learned Authors.

God Hath Varied The Inclinations Of Men According To The Variety Of Actions To Be Performed.

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 Belief.

Study Prophecies When They Are Become Histories.

That Some Have Never Dreamed Is As Improbable As That Some Have Never Laughed.

Affection Should Not Be Too Sharp Eyed, And Love Is Not Made By Magnifying Glasses.

Light Is But The Shadow Of God.

Half Our Days We Pass In The Shadow Of The Earth; And The Brother Of Death Exacteth A Third Part Of Our Lives.

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.

Rough Diamonds May Sometimes Be Mistaken For Worthless Pebbles.

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.

Gold Once Out Of The Earth Is No More Due Unto It; What Was Unreasonably Committed To The Ground, Is Reasonably Resumed From It; Let Monuments And Rich Fabricks, Not Riches, Adorn Men's Ashes.

Man Is A Noble Animal, Splendid In Ashes, And Pompous In The Grave.

Sleep Is Death's Younger Brother, And So Like Him, That I Never Dare Trust Him Without My Prayers.

Miserable Men Commiserate Not Themselves; Bowelless Unto Others, And Merciless Unto Their Own Bowels.

He Is Like To Be Mistaken Who Makes Choice Of A Covetous Man For A Friend, Or Relieth Upon The Reed Of Narrow And Poltroon Friendship. Pitiful Things Are Only To Be Found In The Cottages Of Such Breasts; But Bright Thoughts, Clear Deeds, Constancy, Fidelity, Bounty And Generous Honesty Are The Gems Of Noble Minds, Wherein (to Derogate From None) The True, Heroic English Gentleman Hath No Peer.

To Me Avarice Seems Not So Much A Vice As A Deplorable Piece Of Madness.

What Song The Syrens Sang, Or What Name Achilles Assumed When He Hid Himself Among Women, Though Puzzling Questions, Are Not Beyond All Conjecture.

For God Is Like A Skilfull Geometrician.

If There Be Any Among Those Common Objects Of Hatred I Do Contemn And Laugh At, It Is That Great Enemy Of Reason, Virtue, And Religion, The Multitude; That Numerous Piece Of Monstrosity, Which, Taken Asunder, Seem Men, And The Reasonable Creatures Of God, But, Confused Together, Make But One Great Beast, And A Monstrosity More Prodigious Than Hydra.

There Is No Royal Road Or Ready Way To Virtue.

But Man Is A Noble Animal, Splendid In Ashes, And Pompous In The Grave, Solemnizing Nativities And Deaths With Equal Lustre, Nor Omitting Ceremonies Of Bravery, In The Infamy Of His Nature. Life Is A Pure Flame, And We Live By An Invisible Sun Within Us.

Life Itself Is But The Shadow Of Death, And Souls Departed But The Shadows Of The Living.

Shadow Of Death

There Is Another Man Within Me That's Angry With Me.

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.

We Term Sleep A Death, And Yet It Is Waking That Kills Us, And Destroys Those Spirits That Are The House Of Life.

I Am In No Way Facetious, Nor Disposed For The Mirth And Galliardize Of Company, Yet In One Dream I Can Compose A Whole Comedy, Behold The Action, Apprehend The Jests, And Laugh Myself Awake At The Conceits Thereof.

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.

If Riches Increase, Let Thy Mind Hold Pace With Them; And Think It Not Enough To Be Liberal, But Munificent.

As Sins Proceed They Ever Multiply, And Like Figures In Arithmetic, The Last Stands For More Than All That Wert Before It.

A Man May Be In As Just Possession Of The Truth As Of A City, And Yet Be Forced To Surrender.

Were The Happiness Of The Next World Is As Closely Apprehended As The Felicities Of This, It Were A Martyrdom To Live.

The Discourses Of The Table Among True Loving Friends Are Held In Strict Silence.

... Indeed, What Reason May Not Go To School To The Wisdom Of Bees, Ants, And Spiders? What Wise Hand Teacheth Them To Do What Reason Cannot Teach Us? Ruder Heads Stand Amazed At Those Prodigious Pieces Of Nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromedaries, And Camels; These, I Confess, Are The Colossuses And Majestick Pieces Of Her Hand; But In These Narrow Engines There Is More Curious Mathematieks; And The Civility Of These Little Citizens More Neatly Sets Forth The Wisdom Of Their Maker.

All The Wonders You Seek Are Within Yourself.

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.

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.

He Who Must Needs Have Company, Must Needs Have Sometimes Bad Company.

We Do But Learn To-day What Our Better Advanced Judgements Will Unteach Us Tomorrow.

I Can Hardly Thinke There Was Any Scared Into Heaven; They Go The Surest Way To Heaven Who Would Serve God Without A Hell; Other Mercenaries, That Crouch Unto Him In Feare Of Hell, Though They Terme Themselves Servants, Are Indeed But The Slaves Of The Almighty.

Let Any Stranger Find Mee So Pleasant A County, Such Good Way, Large Heath, Three Such Places As Norwich, Yar. And Lin. In Any County Of England, And I'll Bee Once Again A Vagabond To Visit Them.

Circles And Right Lines Limit And Close All Bodies, And The Mortal Right-lined Circle Must Conclude And Shut Up All.

The Religion Of One Seems Madness Unto Another.

By Compassion We Make Others' Misery Our Own, And So, By Relieving Them, We Relieve Ourselves Also.

Where Life Is More Terrible Than Death, It Is Then The Truest Valor To Dare To Live.

Think Not Silence The Wisdom Of Fools; But, If Rightly Timed, The Honor Of Wise Men, Who Have Not The Infirmity, But The Virtue Of Taciturnity.

There Is Musick, Even In The Beauty And The Silent Note Which Cupid Strikes, Far Sweeter Than The Sound Of An Instrument.

Now With My Friend I Desire Not To Share Or Participate, But To Engross His Sorrows, That, By Making Them Mine Own, I May More Easily Discuss Them; For In Mine Own Reason, And Within Myself, I Can Command That Which I Cannot Entreat Without Myself, And Within The Circle Of Another.

I Have Loved My Friends As I Do Virtue, My Soul, My God.

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.

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?

Life Is A Pure Flame And We Live By An Invisible Sun Within Us.

Rich With The Spoils Of Nature.

There Is No Such Thing As Solitude, Nor Anything That Can Be Said To Be Alone And By Itself But God, Who Is His Own Circle, And Can Subsist By Himself.

Think Not Thy Time Short In This World, Since The World Itself Is Not Long. The Created World Is But A Small Parenthesis In Eternity, And A Short Interposition, For A Time, Between Such A State Of Duration As Was Before It And May Be After It.

Therefore For Spirits, I Am So Far From Denying Their Existence That I Could Easily Believe, That Not Only Whole Countries, But Particular Persons, Have Their Tutelary And Guardian Angels.

No One Should Approach The Temple Of Science With The Soul Of A Money Changer.

There Are No Grotesques In Nature; Not Anything Framed To Fill Up Empty Cantons, And Unnecessary Spaces.

To Be Nameless In Worthy Deeds Exceeds An Infamous History.

Life Itself Is But The Shadow Of Death, And Souls Departed But The Shadows Of The Living: All Things Fall Under This Name. The Sun Itself Is But The Dark Simulacrum, And The Light But The Shadow Of God.

Shadow Of Death

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.

He Who Discommendeth Others Obliquely Commendeth Himself (christian Morals).

I Have Tried If I Could Reach That Great Resolution . . . To Be Honest Without A Thought Of Heaven Or Hell.

Yet Is Every Man His Greatest Enemy, And, As It Were, His Own Executioner.

Think It More Satisfactory To Live Richly Than Die Rich.

I Have Often Admired The Mystical Way Of Pythagoras, And The Secret Magick Of Numbers.

To Make An End Of All Things On Earth, And Our Planetical System Of The World, He (god) Need But Put Out The Sun.

Charity Begins At Home, Is The Voice Of The World.

It Is We That Are Blind, Not Fortune.

We All Labour Against Our Own Cure, For Death Is The Cure Of All Diseases.

Men Live By Intervals Of Reason Under The Sovereignty Of Humor And Passion.

The Created World Is But A Small Parenthesis In Eternity.

Light That Makes Things Seen, Makes Some Things Invisible.

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.

Men Have Lost Their Reason In Nothing So Much As Their Religion, Wherein Stones And Clouts Make Martyrs.

He That Unburied Lies Wants Not His Hearse, For Unto Him A Tomb's The Universe.

The Severe Schools Shall Never Laugh Me Out Of The Philosophy Of Hermes, That This Visible World Is But A Picture Of The Invisible, Wherein As In A Portrait, Things Are Not Truly, But In Equivocal Shapes, And As They Counterfeit Some Real Substance In That Invisible Fabric.

As For Those Wingy Mysteries In Divinity, And Airy Subtleties In Religion, Which Have Unhinged The Brains Of Better Heads, They Never Stretched The Pia Mater Of Mine; Methinks There Be Not Impossibilities Enough In Religion For An Active Faith.

There Are Wonders In True Affection. It Is A Body Of Enigmas, Mysteries, And Riddles, Wherein Two So Become One, As They Both Become Two.

Oblivion Is Not To Be Hired: The Greater Part Must Be Content To Be As Though They Had Not Been, To Be Found In The Register Of God, Not In The Record Of Man.

They Do Most By Books, Who Could Do Much Without Them, And He That Chiefly Owes Himself Unto Himself, Is The Substantial Man.

Whosoever Enjoys Not This Life, I Count Him But An Apparition, Though He Wear About Him The Sensible Affections Of Flesh. In These Moral Acceptions, The Way To Be Immortal Is To Die Daily.

Though It Be In The Power Of The Weakest Arm To Take Away Life, It Is Not In The Strongest To Deprive Us Of Death.

That Miracles Have Been, I Do Believe; That They May Yet Be Wrought By The Living, I Do Not Deny: But Have No Confidence In Those Which Are Fathered On The Dead.

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.

Be Charitable Before Wealth Make Thee Covetous, And Loose Not The Glory Of The Mite.

Do The Devils Lie? No; For Then Even Hell Could Not Subsist.

For The World, I Count It Not An Inn, But A Hospital; And A Place Not To Live, But To Die In.

Festination May Prove Precipitation; Deliberating Delay May Be Wise Cunctation.

Procrastination

What Then Is The Wisdom Of The Times Called Old? Is It The Wisdom Of Gray Hairs? No. It Is The Wisdom Of The Cradle.

Let The Fruition Of Things Bless The Possession Of Them, And Take No Satisfaction In Dying But Living Rich.

I Can Cure The Gout Or Stone In Some, Sooner Than Divinity, Pride, Or Avarice In Others.

There Are Mystically In Our Faces Certain Characters Which Carry In Them The Motto Of Our Souls, Wherein He That Cannot Read May Read Our Natures.

I Am The Happiest Man Alive. I Have That In Me That Can Convert Poverty To Riches, Adversity To Prosperity, And I Am More Invulnerable Than Archilles; Fortune Hath Not One Place To Hit Me.

It Is We That Are Blind, Not Fortune; Because Our Eye Is Too Dim To Discern The Mystery Of Her Effects, We Foolishly Paint Her Blind, And Hoodwink The Providence Of The Almighty.

Content May Dwell In All Stations. To Be Low But Above Contempt May Be High Enough To Be Happy.

I Love To Lose Myself In A Mystery To Pursue My Reason To An O Altitudo.

The Man Without A Navel Still Lives In Me.

A Diamond, Which Is The Hardest Of Stones, Not Yielding Unto Steel, Emery Or Any Other Thing, Is Yet Made Soft By The Blood Of A Goat.

(death Is) A Leap Into The Dark.

A Little Water Makes A Sea, A Small Puff Of Wind A Tempest.

I Believe The World Grows Near Its End, Yet Is Neither Old Nor Decayed, Nor Will Ever Perish Upon The Ruins Of Its Own Principles.

Light Is The Shadow Of God.

Persecution Is A Bad And Indirect Way To Plan Religion.

To Call Ourselves A Microcosme, Or Little World, I Thought It Onely A Pleasant Trope Of Rhetorick, Till My Neare Judgement And Second Thoughts Told Me There Was A Reall Truth Therein: For First Wee Are A Rude Masse, And In The Ranke Of Creatures, Which Only Are, And Have A Dull Kinde Of Being Not Yet Priviledged With Life, Or Preferred To Sense Or Reason; Next We Live The Life Of Plants, The Life Of Animals, The Life Of Men, And At Last The Life Of Spirits, Running On In One Mysterious Nature Those Five Kinds Of Existence, Which Comprehend The Creatures Not Onely Of World, But Of The Universe.

Be Thou What Thou Singly Art And Personate Only Thyself. Swim Smoothly In The Stream Of Thy Nature And Live But One Man.

Self Confidence

No Man Can Justly Censure Or Condemn Another, Because Indeed No Man Truly Knows Another.

Since Women Do Most Delight In Revenge, It May Seem But Feminine Manhood To Be Vindictive.

Where We Desire To Be Informed 'tis Good To Contest With Men Above Ourselves; But To Confirm And Establish Our Opinions, 'tis Best To Argue With Judgments Below Our Own, That The Frequent Spoils And Victories Over Their Reasons May Settle In Ourselves An Esteem And Confirmed Opinion Of Our Own.

There Is No Man Alone, Because Every Man Is A Microcosm, And Carries The Whole World About Him.

Age Doth Not Rectify, But Incurvate Our Natures, Turning Bad Dispositions Into Worser Habits.

For There Is A Music Wherever There Is A Harmony, Order, Or Proportion, And Thus Far We May Maintain The Music Of The Spheres.

It Is The Common Wonder Of All Men, How Among So Many Million Faces, There Should Be None Alike.

He Is Rich Who Hath Enough To Be Charitable.

Lord Deliver Me From Myself.

There Is Nothing Strictly Immortal, But Immortality. Whatever Hath No Beginning May Be Confident Of No End.

Gardens Were Before Gardeners, And But Some Hours After The Earth.

Be Deaf Unto The Suggestions Of Tale-bearers, Calumniators, Pick-thank Or Malevolent Detractors, Who, While Quiet Men Sleep, Sowing The Tares Of Discord And Division, Distract The Tranquillity Of Charity And All Friendly Society. These Are The Tongues That Set The World On Fire--cankerers Of Reputation, And, Like That Of Jonah's Gourd, Wither A Good Name In A Single Night.

Tis Hard To Find A Whole Age To Imitate, Or What Century To Propose For Example.

There Is Music Wherever There Is Harmony, Order And Proportion; And Thus Far We May Maintain The Music Of The Spheres; For Those Well Ordered Motions, And Regular Paces, Though They Give No Sound Unto The Ear, Yet To The Understanding They Strike A Note Most Full Of Harmony.

We Term Sleep A Death By Which We May Be Literally Said To Die Daily; In Fine, So Like Death, I Dare Not Trust It Without My Prayers.

The Heart Of Man Is The Place The Devil Dwells In; I Feel Sometimes A Hell Within Myself.

A Wise Man Is Out Of The Reach Of Fortune.

I Would Not Live Over My Hours Past ... Not Unto Cicero's Ground Because I Have Lived Them Well, But For Fear I Should Live Them Worse.

There Is Surely A Piece Of Divinity In Us, Something Was Before The Elements, And Owes No Homage Unto The Sun.

To Be Content With Death May Be Better Than To Desire It.

The Vices We Scoff At In Others Laugh At Us Within Ourselves.

Many-have Too Rashly Charged The Troops Of Error, And Remain As Trophies Unto The Enemies Of Truth.

Nor Do They Speak Properly Who Say That Time Consumeth All Things; For Time Is Not Effective, Nor Are Bodies Destroyed By It.

The Noblest Digladiation Is In The Theatre Of Ourselves.

Women Do Most Delight In Revenge.

Thus There Are Two Books From Whence I Collect My Divinity; Besides That Written One Of God, Another Of His Servant Nature, That Universal And Public Manuscript, That Lies Expans'd Unto The Eyes Of All; Those That Never Saw Him In The One, Have Discovered Him In The Other.

The Long Habit Of Living Indisposeth Us For Dying.

I Could Never Divide Myself From Any Man Upon The Difference Of An Opinion, Or Be Angry With His Judgment For Not Agreeing With Me In That From Which Perhaps Within A Few Days I Should Dissent Myself.

I Am Not So Much Afraid Of Death, As Ashamed Thereof, 'tis The Very Disgrace And Ignominy Of Our Natures.

But The Iniquity Of Oblivion Blindly Scattereth Her Poppy, And Deals With The Memory Of Men Without Distinction To Merit Of Perpetuity.

The World, Which Took Six Days To Make, Is Likely To Take Us Six Thousand Years To Make Out.

Be Able To Be Alone. Lose Not The Advantage Of Solitude.

They That Endeavour To Abolish Vice Destroy Also Virtue, For Contraries, Though They Destroy One Another, Are Yet The Life Of One Another.

How Shall We Expect Charity Towards Others, When We Are Uncharitable To Ourselves?

Thus Is Man That Great And True Amphibium, Whose Nature Is Disposed To Live, Not Onely Like Other Creatures In Divers Elements, But In Divided And Distinguished Worlds: For Though There Be But One To Sense, There Are Two To Reason, The One Visible, The Other Invisible.

Where I Cannot Satisfy My Reason, I Love To Humour My Fancy.

For My Part, I Have Ever Believed, And Do Now Know, That There Are Witches.

And Surely, He That Hath Taken The True Altitude Of Things, And Rightly Calculated The Degenerate State Of This Age, Is Not Like To Envy Those That Shall Live In The Next, Much Less Three Or Four Hundred Years Hence, When No Man Can Comfortably Imagine What Face This World Will Carry.

The Service Of Love Is The Foolishest Act A Wise Man Commits In All His Life, Nor Is There Anything That Will More Deject His Cool'd Imagination, When He Shall Consider What An Odd And Unworthy Piece Of Folly He Hath Committed.

A Man Is Never Alone, Not Only Because He Is With Himself And His Own Thoughts, But Because He Is With The Devil, Who Ever Consorts With Our Solitude.

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