Francis Bacon

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

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

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

Those who would mend the world must first mend themselves.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…