Francis Bacon

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

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

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

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.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it’s what he descends to that shames the human race.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.