Francis Bacon

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.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I would live to study, and not study to live.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.