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I look upon you as a gem of the old rock.
Topic: Ancestry
Source: Dedication to Urn Burial
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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.
Topic: Argument
Source: Religio Medici (pt. I, VI)
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Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they
being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection
of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there
were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another.
In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of
God.
Topic: Art
Source: Religio Medici (sec. 16)
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The voice of the world ["Charity begins at home"].
Topic: Charity
Source: Religio Medici
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Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: I desire to exercise my faith in the most difficult point, for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing Christ's Sepulchre, and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not the miracle. Now contrarily I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor His Disciples; I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's patients, on whom He wrought His wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist Continuing a series on God and the human condition: If we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great work of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating disposition, for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth more to passion than reason.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, Spiritual Writer, 1688 Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, ... but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency... Life is pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Not worthy to carry the buckler unto him.
Topic: Comparisons
Source: Religio Medici (pt. I, sec. 21)
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Where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he
hid himself among women.
Topic: Deceit
Source: Urn Burial (ch. V)
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To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history.
Topic: Deeds
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. V)
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Every man is his own greatest enemy, and as it were his own
executioner.
Topic: Enemies
Source: Religio Medici
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Have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain as
trophies unto the enemies of truth.
Topic: Errors
Source: Religio Medici (pt. I, sec. VI)
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The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity.
Topic: Eternity
Source: Works (vol. III, p. 143), (Bohn's edition)
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It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of
faces there should be none alike.
Topic: Faces
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. II)
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Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost
lost that built it.
Topic: Fame
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. V)
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I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
Topic: Friends
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. V)
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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.
Topic: Friends
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. V)
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God is like a skilful Geometrician.
Topic: God
Source: Religio Medici I (16)
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Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.
Topic: Grave
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. V)
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He that unburied lies wants not his hearse,
For unto him a tomb's the Universe.
Topic: Grave
Source: Religio Medici (pt. I, sec. XLI)
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Festination may prove Precipitation;
Deliberating delay may be wise cunctation.
Topic: Haste
Source: Christian Morals (pt. I, sec. XXIII), (paraphrasing Caesar)
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The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel
sometimes a hell dwells within myself.
Topic: Hell
Source: Religio Medici (pt. I, sec. LI)
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There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever
hath no beginning may be confident of no end.
Topic: Immortality
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. V)
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Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the
grave.
Topic: Man
Source: Urn Burial (ch. V)
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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.
Topic: Monuments
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. III)
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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.
Topic: Monuments
Source: Hydriotaphia (ch. V)
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And sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note
which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument;
for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or
proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the
spheres.
Topic: Music
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. IX)
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Rich with the spoils of nature.
Topic: Nature
Source: Religio Medici (pt. XIII)
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There are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up
empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces.
Topic: Nature
Source: Religio Medici (pt. XV)
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Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they
being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection
of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there
were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another.
In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of
God.
Topic: Nature
Source: Religio Medici (sec. 16)
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All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherin he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.
Topic: Nature
Source: None
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Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.
Topic: Religion
Source: Religio Medici (XXV)
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Women do most delight in revenge.
Topic: Revenge
Source: Christian Morals (part III, sec. XII)
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When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are
spoken under the rose.
- Sir Thomas Browne,
Topic: Secrecy
Source: Vulgar Errors--Of speaking Under the Rose--Pseudodoxia (5, 23)
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Est rosa flos Veneris cujus quo furta laterent.
[Roughly meaning, The discourses of the table among true loving
friends are held in strict silence.]
Topic: Secrecy
Source: Vulgar Errors--Of speaking Under the Rose--Pseudodoxia (5, 23)
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Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes.
Topic: Sleep
Source: Hydriotaphia
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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.
Topic: Sleep
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. XII)
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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.
Topic: Time
Source: Christian Morals (pt. III, XXIX)
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A wise man is out of the reach of fortune.
Topic: Wisdom
Source: Religion Medici, quoted as "That insolent paradox"
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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.
Topic: World
Source: Religio Medici
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