Francis Bacon

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

It is natural to die as to be born.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.

The world is its own magic.

It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any effect other than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

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.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.