Francis Bacon

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?

Necessity, who is the mother of invention.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.