Francis Bacon

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

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

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Language is the dress of thought.

I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.