Francis Bacon

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

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people

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.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.

Your mind will enchain you. Your heart will set you free.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Friends are thieves of time.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Necessity does everything well.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.