Francis Bacon

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise!

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

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

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.

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.