书目 · 1869，伦敦
Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend
Sir Thomas Browne
简介
Thomas Browne（1605—1682）是17世纪英国医生兼散文家。此书乃是其人三篇文章的合集。NOTES部分是一些适用于本企划调性风格的句子节选与参考，大多为机翻+个人润色。附有原文。
备注
1.英文部分：Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. 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. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.
中文部分：这里面偶然的成分如此之多，以至于那些最有把握留名的人也常常失望；所谓长久存在，不过是从遗忘中暂时逃脱罢了。然而人是一种高贵的动物，在灰烬中仍要华丽，在坟墓里仍要铺张；出生和死亡都要以同样的光彩来庆祝，即使身处自身卑微的境况，也不肯省去那些显耀的仪式。
生命是一团纯粹的火焰，而我们凭借体内一轮无形的太阳活着。维持生命，一点小小的火就已经足够；可到了死后，再大的烈焰似乎都嫌简陋。人们徒然追求昂贵的柴堆，想像萨尔达那帕鲁斯那样焚烧自己；直到葬礼法规看出了这种挥霍火焰的愚蠢，把毁灭性的烈火约束进较为节制的丧仪之中。于是，再贫穷的人，也总还拿得出木柴、沥青、一个送葬者和一只骨灰瓮。
2.英文部分：our ends are as obscure as our beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible。
中文部分：我们的终点与我们的开端同样晦暗；我们日子的线条在黑夜中被画出，其间种种作用，都由一支不可见的笔描绘。
3.英文部分：The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox?
中文部分：时间的黑夜远远长过它的白昼；又有谁知道，昼夜平分之时曾在何处？
4.英文部分：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 fabrick.
中文部分：那些严苛的学派绝不能以讥笑使我放弃赫尔墨斯的哲学：这个可见的世界不过是不可见者的一幅图像；其中万物并不以其真实本身显现，而呈现为多义的形状，仿佛摹写着那不可见结构中的某种真实实体。
5.英文部分：“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
中文部分：长久活着的习惯，使我们变得不适于死亡。
6.英文部分：Time past is gone like a shadow; make times to come present; conceive that near which may be far off.
中文部分：过去已经像影子一样消失了；让未来成为现在，把也许还很遥远的事想成已经临近。