Thomas Browne Quotes
British - Scientist October 19, 1605 - October 19, 1682

Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.
Thomas Browne

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks.
Thomas Browne

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
Thomas Browne

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

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.
Thomas Browne

Death is the cure for all diseases.
Thomas Browne

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.
Thomas Browne

Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
Thomas Browne

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
Thomas Browne

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.
Thomas Browne

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.
Thomas Browne

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.
Thomas Browne

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.
Thomas Browne

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

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

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.
Thomas Browne

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
Thomas Browne


Leigh Hunt Quotes
English - Poet October 19, 1784 - August 28, 1859


Colors are the smiles of nature.
Leigh Hunt

The groundwork of all happiness is health.
Leigh Hunt

Stolen kisses are always sweetest.
Leigh Hunt

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.
Leigh Hunt

The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.
Leigh Hunt

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.
Leigh Hunt

The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.
Leigh Hunt

There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.
Leigh Hunt

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.
Leigh Hunt

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.
Leigh Hunt

Those who have lost an infant are never, in a way, without an infant.
Leigh Hunt

Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.
Leigh Hunt

If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.
Leigh Hunt

The only place a new hat can be carried into with safety is a church, for there is plenty of room there.
Leigh Hunt

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
Thomas Browne

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.
Thomas Browne

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
Thomas Browne

It is we that are blind, not fortune.
Thomas Browne


Lewis Mumford Quotes
American - Sociologist October 19, 1895 - January 26, 1990

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.
Lewis Mumford

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.
Lewis Mumford

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer.
Lewis Mumford

Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.
Lewis Mumford

However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible.
Lewis Mumford

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.
Lewis Mumford

Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.
Lewis Mumford

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.
Lewis Mumford

It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless.
Lewis Mumford

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.
Lewis Mumford

Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.
Lewis Mumford

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.
Lewis Mumford

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.
Lewis Mumford

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.
Lewis Mumford

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis Mumford

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.
Lewis Mumford

New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city.
Lewis Mumford

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.
Lewis Mumford

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.
Lewis Mumford

The cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.
Lewis Mumford

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
Lewis Mumford

Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.
Lewis Mumford

The earth is the Lord's fullness thereof: this is no longer a hollow dictum of religion, but a directive for economic action toward human brotherhood.
Lewis Mumford

Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
Lewis Mumford

Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.
Lewis Mumford

Don't take the will for the deed; get the deed.
Lewis Mumford

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.
Lewis Mumford

The artist does not illustrate science (but) he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does.
Lewis Mumford

The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.
Lewis Mumford