Francis Bacon

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

There are those that are void of all mercy, but when it comes the time that they are on their knees, they plead for it. Those that were born with the art of deception, never sincere with their words or actions. But mercy is not theirs to take, only for you to give. Never compromise your standards, your beliefs and become like the ones who you are fighting against, but stay resolute to who you are.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.