The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

This sentence is associated with Sir Thomas Browne’s reflections on mortality and spiritual preparedness in his devotional prose. Browne, a physician writing in a 17th‑century England marked by recurrent plague, high infant mortality, and religious controversy, repeatedly meditates on how ordinary life can dull one’s awareness of death. The remark fits the tone and aims of his private, introspective writings—especially those that urge readers to practice a kind of daily “memento mori,” so that death will not arrive as an alien interruption but as a familiar, contemplated passage.

Browne suggests that sheer familiarity with living—its pleasures, projects, and daily continuities—can make death feel unnatural and psychologically unthinkable. The “habit” of life trains us to expect tomorrow, to plan, to cling; those reflexes can “indispose” us, leaving us unprepared to relinquish control or accept finitude. The aphorism also implies a spiritual critique: if one lives as though life were permanent, one neglects the inner work of detachment, humility, and readiness that many religious traditions recommend. Its force lies in the paradox that the very success of living (settling into life) can undermine the art of dying well.