Francis Bacon

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

People of great position are servants times three, servants of their country, servants of fame, and servants of business.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.