Francis Bacon

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.

You affect your subconscious mind by verbal repetition.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.