Francis Bacon

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

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

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Try not. Do or do not… there is no try.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.